Saudi National Charged with Bugging OpenAI's Office

Dow Jones10-14 06:01

A Saudi national who worked as an engineer at OpenAI has been arrested and charged with hiding an encrypted recording device at a company office in San Francisco.

Federal prosecutors alleged Tuesday that the suspect, a 35-year-old man named Abdulrahman Alfozan, concealed the small black device in toilet paper and hid it behind a television in an OpenAI conference room in late September.

OpenAI alerted the FBI after discovering the device, and Alfozan was arrested last week. Alfozan, who had worked on OpenAI's product team for more than a year, was charged with using or endeavoring to use a device to intercept oral communications, prosecutors said.

OpenAI said that it fired Alfozan. The company added that it has no indication that he accessed the model weights that drive its artificial intelligence tools. OpenAI takes protecting its technology "as a matter of national importance," a spokesperson said.

Attempts to reach Alfozan and to determine the identity of his lawyer were unsuccessful.

News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

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