OpenAI employee arrested and charged over hidden recording

Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi Arabian national living in the United States, is accused of using an OpenAI chatbot to help plant a covert audio recording device in the office. According to federal prosecutors, Alfozan spent several weeks querying an unspecified "productivity agent" and an "AI chatbot" to plan his alleged surveillance operation.

He used an internal OpenAI tool to inquire about meetings scheduled in a specific conference room and also utilized a chatbot associated with his spouse to ask technical questions about setting up the covert recording device. In addition to the device discovered in Alfozan's bag, OpenAI's security team found another encrypted Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense listening device, which cannot be reviewed due to encryption.

This device, priced at $13.99, is described as "sophisticated" by OpenAI. Alfozan, who joined OpenAI in July 2025 and was subsequently fired, could face up to five years in prison if convicted of using an electronic or mechanical device to intercept oral communications. The conference room targeted by Alfozan is typically reserved for executives and executive assistants, used for internal leadership meetings, technical sessions, and external briefings.

The room is known to discuss highly confidential information, including research, products, business strategy, and government relationships. OpenAI discovered the bug, described as "concealed in toilet paper" and inserted into a USB port on a television, during a countersurveillance sweep on September 30. Alfozan has prior experience working at a cargo logistics startup and at Meta, and was also part of a group of Saudi engineers in Silicon Valley offering consulting services to Saudi organizations.

The incident occurred amid a recent pact between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia, granting the kingdom access to advanced chips and AI technologies, which has implications for US tech companies and their capital sources.