{"id":927343,"date":"2026-10-14T03:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T03:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927343\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T03:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T03:00:12","slug":"openai-employee-with-saudi-links-busted-collecting-superintelligence-information","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/927343\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI employee with Saudi links busted collecting ‘superintelligence’ information"},"content":{"rendered":"

An OpenAI engineer has been charged with secretly installing a recording device in a conference room, in what officials say was an effort to capture sensitive conversations about the company’s technology.<\/p>\n

The employee, identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan, was arrested a week after the ChatGPT maker discovered the device.<\/p>\n

Australia to pursue AI guardrails after OpenAI breach<\/a><\/p>\n

OpenAI’s delayed reporting of an autonomous agent breaching a government website has strengthened Australia’s push for tougher AI safety and disclosure rules.<\/p>\n

The US Department of Justice released a statement on Tuesday, local time, detailing OpenAI’s complaint after the discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In it, FBI director Kash Patel said Mr Alfozan “allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture sensitive communications about the company’s superintelligence technology.”<\/p>\n

The term superintelligence has been adopted by the White House after Donald Trump issued an executive order demanding administration officials use it in place of the term artificial intelligence. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The complaint did not identify the company, but OpenAI later confirmed in a statement on X that it uncovered a “sophisticated recording device” in one of its offices.<\/p>\n

“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,” the statement read.<\/p>\n

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we\u2019re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest.”<\/p>\n

The department said Mr Alfozan, who had been working at OpenAI since July 25, was fired shortly after.<\/p>\n

The department said the company’s complaint did not detail what Mr Alfozan might have wanted to do with any captured communications.<\/p>\n

Mr Alfozan faces a charge of using or endeavouring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He made his first court appearance on Tuesday, local time, and it was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer to speak on his behalf.<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, the recording device was found on September 30 concealed in toilet paper and inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in the conference room.<\/p>\n

Though the conference room where the recording device was found did not have a camera at the time it was installed, closed-circuit television footage inside the company’s offices revealed that Mr Alfozan was near the conference room on half a dozen occasions last month despite not having any authority to access the space, the complaint said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The covert recording device was discovered inside an OpenAI conference room. (Supplied: US Department of Justice)<\/p>\n

The company later added a camera to the room, which captured Mr Alfozan entering and checking behind the television where the recording device was installed, according to the FBI.<\/p>\n

The complaint also said he used a productivity tool to make multiple inquiries about the company’s building addresses, meeting rooms, meeting-room capacities and calendars.<\/p>\n

Before his arrest last week, the complaint said Mr Alfozan left an unattended bag in another room in the building that included his wallet, identification, and another recording device.<\/p>\n

ABC\/AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An OpenAI engineer has been charged with secretly installing a recording device in a conference room, in what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[494511,64,63,99,7810,5044,494512],"class_list":["post-927343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-abdulrahman-alfozan","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-fbi","tag-openai","tag-recording-device"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}