The ex-OpenAI employee allegedly wrapped a USB device in toilet paper and inserted it into a television located in an "executive conference room".
OpenAI said it has alerted the FBI after it found a hidden recording device in an executive conference room in its San Francisco office, which led to the firing of an employee.
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The suspect was identified as employee Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, who was arrested on October 9, about a week after OpenAI discovered the surveillance device. He made an initial appearance in a US court on Tuesday.
He was charged with using or endeavouring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. Alfozan joined OpenAI as an engineer in July 2025.
Prosecutors said the device was wrapped in toilet paper and inserted in a USB port on the back of a TV in an executive conference room.
He was allegedly spotted near the executive conference room in CCTV footage on multiple dates before the device was discovered, according to the Justice Department.
Conversations in the conference room "frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information," the Justice Department said.
The allegations come as the US and China race to become the leader in AI, which the Trump administration has pushed to be rebranded as "superintelligence".
“We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier,” OpenAI said in a statement posted on X.
The ChatGPT maker said it had “no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data”.
If convicted, Alfozan faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 (€200,000) fine, followed by three years of supervised release.
