Saudi OpenAI Engineer Arrested By FBI Over Hidden Recording Device, DOJ Says

Oct 13 (Reuters) - U.S. federal agents arrested a Saudi national employed as an OpenAI engineer and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording device in an executive conference room at the AI company, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

OpenAI had used its internal AI models to identify the individual responsible for planting the device and to trace its origins, it said in an X post.

“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” according to the AI company.

The company said it referred the matter to the FBI, which is continuing to investigate. The FBI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for more details.

Earlier this year, a Texas man was charged with throwing a Molotov cocktail at the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and attempting to set fire to the AI firm’s headquarters.

OpenAI faces scrutiny over security incidents involving its AI systems. Reuters and other media outlets reported recently that the company had told investors its annualized revenue for September was almost $50 billion, a drop from what it signaled earlier.

OpenAI said on Friday it fired three researchers after an investigation found they had violated company policies on handling sensitive information.

The statement came after the researchers, Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni, published a letter detailing the circumstances of their dismissal and arguing that the abrupt firings could create uncertainty among employees and undermine a culture that had allowed researchers to raise safety concerns.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Diti Pujara and Anil D’Silva)