OpenAI employee arrested over alleged recording device

The Justice Department said Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, had been arrested on Friday and made his first appearance in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. He was charged with trying to use a device to intercept oral communications.

Prosecutors said OpenAI staff found an audio recorder on 30 September inside an executive conference room. They said it had been placed in a USB port behind a television and later concluded that it had been concealed in toilet paper and put there about two days earlier.

The department said the room was often used for discussions about research, product plans and business development. OpenAI said it contacted the FBI after the discovery and terminated the worker accused of planting the device.

OpenAI said it had no indications that the person had accessed or taken model weights, source code or customer data. In a statement to CBS News, Alfozan's lawyer, William Pernik, said his client was presumed innocent and warned against drawing conclusions too early.

The complaint also alleged that Alfozan had used a productivity tool to ask about building addresses, meeting-room capacities, calendars and the locations of leadership and external partner meetings. It further said prompts from an account linked to his spouse related to building, customising, installing and remotely accessing a continuous audio recording device.