Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan was arrested last week after being accused of bugging an OpenAI executive conference room in San Francisco, nabbed by the FBI and charged with using a device to “intercept oral communications.”
The venture capital partner — who had been actively employed at OpenAI as a lead engineer for around a year before being fired this month — extensively consulted AI chatbots on how to install a bug and access its recordings remotely.
The meeting room he tried to bug regularly hosted meetings that included “highly confidential technical, commercial and strategic information,” according to an official complaint filed in court. Alfozan did not have authority to access the room, which is exclusively reserved for execs and their assistants.
But he apparently did a poor job of covering his tracks. On September 30, staff found a highly suspicious, “surreptitious audio recording device” that was wrapped in toilet paper and hidden behind a TV. Then, on October 5, a newly installed camera caught him entering the room and checking in on the location.
