United States federal agents have arrested a Saudi national and charged him with planting a hidden audio recording device in a conference room at the California offices of OpenAI, where he was working as an engineer.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, ۳۵, had been working at the AI company since July ۲۰۲۵, the US Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday.
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OpenAI discovered the device plugged into a USB port behind a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings on September ۳۰, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Following the discovery, the company placed a camera in the room, which captured Alfozan entering last week and checking behind the television where the listening device had been installed, the FBI alleges.
The case highlights growing security concerns around sensitive AI research as companies and governments compete for the best talent and technology with the potential to alter regional economic and strategic dynamics.
Who is Abdulrahman Alfozan and what is he charged with?
Alfozan has been a legal permanent resident of the US since September ۲۰۲۰.
According to a LinkedIn profile in his name, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California, Berkeley. He previously worked at Meta and Microsoft, it said.
Before he joined OpenAI, he was a venture partner at Raed Ventures, headquartered in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which invested “in seed and early-stage startups in Saudi Arabia and MENA”.
Al Jazeera could not independently verify the details mentioned in this LinkedIn profile.
Alfozan made his first court appearance on Tuesday on a charge of “using or endeavouring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications”.
It was not immediately clear if he has legal representation. He is expected to return to court on October ۱۹.
If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison, a $۲۵۰,۰۰۰ fine, and three years of supervised release.
What happened at OpenAI?
The FBI says a thumb-sized device with a microphone, and which could connect to a camera, had been concealed in toilet paper and placed behind a television set in the conference room. It was installed around September ۲۸, the FBI said. Its stored data was encrypted and inaccessible. Investigators later found a similar device in Alfozan’s personal bag.
In a post on X, OpenAI said it had evidence that the employee intended to place other listening devices throughout sensitive areas of its offices to secretly record meetings.
“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” the company said.
The FBI complaint also alleges that Alfozan used an AI productivity tool to make multiple inquiries about the company’s building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars, despite not having the authority to access these spaces or participate in meetings there.
“This alleged attempt by a Saudi national to steal sensitive communications from OpenAI was taken extremely seriously. Theft of intellectual property involving cutting-edge super intelligence technology poses a serious threat to our national security,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement on X.
Hasn’t OpenAI been accused of helping to spy on civilians?
In an X post by OpenAI explaining how its own systems were used to trap Alfozan, the company said: “Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.”
But AI technology is used not only to catch spying, but conversely, to engage in it as well.
In February ۲۰۲۵, an investigation by The Associated Press found that US tech giants had enabled Israel to track and kill people in Gaza and Lebanon through AI and computing services. The AP reported that the Israeli military had bought advanced AI tools from tech companies including OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, to assist with surveillance.
OpenAI denies having a relationship with the Israeli military.
But OpenAI also faced criticism when it signed a deal with the US Department of Defense in February this year to supply its technology to the US military for use in classified settings, including intelligence gathering. OpenAI’s competitor, Anthropic, refused to sign the same deal unless the Pentagon barred mass surveillance of Americans.
There have been several incidents in which OpenAI models have gone “rogue” by independently breaking out of a testing environment and then hacking into other organisations and even government sites, leading to calls for stronger regulations against unchecked AI surveillance.
