The FBI arrested an OpenAI employee from Saudi Arabia on charges that he hid a covert listening device inside the company’s executive conference room to spy on the AI giant’s inner workings.
CNBC reports that the DOJ announced Tuesday that Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, was arrested October 9 in connection with a hidden recording device found in a conference room used by OpenAI executives. OpenAI believes the device had been planted only a few days before it was discovered, and credited federal investigators for swift action: the FBI “moved quickly to make an arrest.”
Alfozan has since been fired from OpenAI. He also holds a listed role as a partner at Raed Ventures, a Riyadh-based venture capital firm focused on investments in the Middle East and North Africa. Raed Ventures did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FBI Director Kash Patel said Alfozan “allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology.”
According to the DOJ, Alfozan was not authorized to enter the conference room where the device was found. Building footage reportedly showed him near the room on multiple occasions in the days before the device was discovered, and investigators say he entered the room directly on October 5. That same day, a bag belonging to Alfozan turned up elsewhere in the building containing his wallet, his identification and a second recording device similar to the one recovered from the conference room. The device in the conference room had been hidden inside toilet paper, and its contents were encrypted, the DOJ said. The department also released a photo showing Alfozan checking a recording device at OpenAI’s San Francisco office.
Investigators also pointed to digital evidence. The DOJ said a chatbot account associated with Alfozan’s spouse shared multiple identifiers and attributes with Alfozan’s own chatbot account, and that the linked account was used to seek information about continuous audio recording and Wi-Fi connectivity. Prompts submitted through the account related to “building, customizing, installing, audio recording, testing, obfuscating, and remote accessing a device,” according to the DOJ.
OpenAI tried to address what may have been exposed. “At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data,” the company said, adding, “We take protecting our technology, data and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance.”
Raed Ventures’ own announcement of Alfozan’s hiring, posted in February, listed his prior work experience at Meta, Microsoft and SAP, and noted that he studied computer science and engineering at MIT. Alfozan was named a venture partner at the firm on February 8, two days after Raed Ventures announced that H.H. Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud had joined as a venture partner.
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Read more at CNBC here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.