Saudi national OpenAI employee arrested after 'sophisticated recording device' planted in office

OpenAI said a "sophisticated recording device" was hidden inside one of its offices and the issue was referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a new post on X Tuesday.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, who is a national of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, was arrested on Oct. 9 in connection with the matter, the Department of Justice said in a release.

The company said an employee planted the device a few days before it was found, and the FBI "moved quickly to make an arrest," the post said. The employee was terminated.

FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement that 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."

"At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," OpenAI said in the post. "We take protecting our technology, data and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance."

This latest incident comes as the ChatGPT-maker, along with competitors like Anthropic and other big tech names, faces heightened scrutiny over its safety protocols after a series of cyber incidents where autonomous agents escaped testing environments and hacked into outside systems.

Last week, OpenAI defended its decision to fire three safety researchers, alleging it uncovered a "significant breach of trust" and that the researchers "violated clear policies on handling sensitive information."

Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni raised safety concerns in a letter to OpenAI's leadership, saying that communications around their exits "have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI."