U.S. federal agents arrested a Saudi national employed as an OpenAI engineer, charging him with installing a hidden audio recording device in an executive conference room at the artificial intelligence company, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
OpenAI utilized its internal AI models to identify the individual responsible for planting the device and to trace its origins, the company stated in an X post. The AI company also confirmed that the employee has been terminated.
"At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data," OpenAI said. The company reported referring the matter to the FBI, which is continuing its investigation.
OpenAI personnel discovered the device, described as a surreptitious audio recording device, inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room within one of the company's San Francisco buildings. The complaint was unsealed on Tuesday.
This incident follows a prior security concern at OpenAI earlier this year, when 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 has also faced scrutiny regarding security incidents involving its AI systems. Recent reports indicated that the company informed investors its annualized revenue for September had reached nearly $50 billion, a decrease from earlier projections.
In a separate development, OpenAI announced on Friday that it had fired three researchers after an internal investigation concluded they had violated company policies concerning the handling of sensitive information. The researchers, Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, subsequently published a letter detailing their dismissals and expressing concerns that such actions could create uncertainty among employees and undermine a culture that previously encouraged researchers to voice safety concerns.