An OpenAI Employee Allegedly Used a Chatbot to Help Plant a Recording Device at the Office

Chatbot prompts reveal the engineer's alleged efforts to set up a covert listening device days before one was found in a meeting room used by high-level executives. An engineer at OpenAI allegedly concealed an audio recording device in a piece of toilet paper and attached it behind a monitor inside an executive conference room at one of the company's San Francisco offices, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday. Abdulrahman Alfozan, who federal prosecutors describe as a 35-year-old Saudi Arabian national and US permanent resident, allegedly spent several weeks querying an unspecified "productivity agent" and an "AI chatbot" to plan his alleged surveillance operation. He used an internal OpenAI tool to ask about meetings scheduled in the targeted conference room. He also appears to have used a chatbot account associated with his spouse to ask various technical questions about setting up a covert audio recording device, according to prosecutors and the court filing.