What We Know About the OpenAI Engineer Charged With Installing a Hidden Recording Device

Prosecutors have released a still image from a surveillance video that they say shows Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, looking behind a monitor where an audio recording device was placed.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday, Alfozan, 35, concealed a recording device in a piece of toilet paper and attached it to a monitor inside an executive conference room in one of OpenAI’s San Francisco offices.

Neither prosecutors nor OpenAI have provided information about a potential motive, but FBI director Kash Patel said Alfozan aimed to capture information about the company’s “super intelligence technology.”

Alfozan is due back in federal court on October 19