OpenAI says Saudi citizen arrested over hidden recording device in office
(Bloomberg) -- An employee at OpenAI was arrested and charged with using a hidden recording device in one of the company’s San Francisco offices, according to statements from the artificial intelligence company and the US Justice Department.
An OpenAI employee, Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, has been arrested and charged with placing a hidden recording device in a San Francisco office, according to the company and the US Justice Department. The device was discovered on September 30 during a security sweep of a conference room, where it was found plugged into a USB port on the back of a television.
Alfozan, who worked on OpenAI's product team, had no authorization to access the conference room, which was used for meetings involving highly confidential information. He was fired on the same day as his arrest. The device, a Seeed Xiao ESP32-S3 Sense, is a small, thumb-sized development board equipped with a detachable camera, microphone, and microSD storage.
OpenAI stated that they have not found any evidence of Alfozan accessing or exfiltrating proprietary data. The incident has raised concerns about security at major technology firms as nations compete to develop more advanced AI systems. Alfozan is set to appear in court on October 19.
Written by urgent.news from The National UAE's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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