Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana have filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI, alleging the company violated consumer protection laws by misrepresenting ChatGPT as safe for young users. The suits cite cases where families say the chatbot contributed to deaths, and accuse OpenAI of collecting data from minors without adequate safeguards. OpenAI says it has built age-specific protections into the product.
OpenAI discovered a USB recording device wrapped in toilet paper and plugged into a TV in a restricted executive conference room where leadership discussed confidential matters. The FBI alleges the device was planted by Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old OpenAI engineer, and CCTV footage shows him later trying to retrieve it. He was arrested and fired on Friday, and faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted of unlawful recording charges.
OpenAI filed a new court document alleging a former employee, who had previously worked at Apple before a six-month stint at OpenAI, sent over 100 confidential files about an unreleased OpenAI device to his personal accounts on his last day. The filing claims the files included device images, engineering and manufacturing data, supplier information and finish specifications, and that the employee later briefed Apple's senior leadership on OpenAI's plans. Apple told Reuters it has found no evidence supporting these claims.
OpenAI has announced the departure of its top computing executive, the person overseeing the company's infrastructure buildout. The company has outlined plans to spend roughly $750 billion on computing capacity through 2030 to support its AI operations.
According to a federal court complaint, Alfozan allegedly used an AI assistant to research meeting room schedules and queried a chatbot linked to his spouse about building and remotely accessing a recording device. CCTV reportedly placed him near a conference room used for confidential discussions on eight occasions in September, despite his having no authorization to be there. A hidden device was later found in that room.
Federal prosecutors charged OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, a Saudi national, after the company discovered a hidden, encrypted audio recording device in one of its conference rooms. OpenAI said it traced the device to Alfozan using its own models, fired him, and referred the case to the FBI, which arrested him on Friday. The company said it has found no evidence he accessed model weights, source code or customer data.
TechCrunch is offering half-price tickets for the remaining two days of its Disrupt 2026 conference at San Francisco's Moscone West, running October 14-15. Discounted passes range from $175 for Expo+ to $600 for Investor access, covering speakers like Mark Wahlberg, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, and Amazon's Panos Panay, plus AI-focused programming from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face.
A Wharton School survey of over 1,000 business leaders found no consensus on who should be blamed when AI systems make consequential mistakes. Roughly a quarter pointed to the employee operating the tool, another quarter to that employee's manager, and a similar share to the company's risk team, while about 10% blamed the AI vendor and 10% were unsure. The study also cited an incident where a faulty AI-driven email bot sent false refund and cancellation notices to more than 18,000 customers at a major U.S. retailer within six hours.
Google released Gemini 4 Argon, a new flagship model it says matches or beats OpenAI and Anthropic on numerous benchmarks, following months in which Google had appeared to fall behind despite Gemini 3's earlier launch. Meta also unveiled a frontier model it claims can compete with the industry's best, marking a sharp turnaround after a period of internal upheaval at Google including departures of Jeff Dean and Demis Hassabis stepping back from DeepMind leadership.
OpenAI's threat report describes a Russia-based operation that impersonated education officials in Peru and Ecuador via email, persuading schools to hold a fabricated 'National Day of Cultural and Linguistic Diversity' event featuring Ukrainian political figures to provoke division. The same report says related Russian-linked activity in Argentina and Bolivia appeared aimed at swaying local politics, with operators using AI tools to draft content and write internal planning reports.
OpenAI filed a court document alleging a former employee copied more than 100 files about its product plans to a personal account, then presented them to Apple executives, including the VP of Apple's Asia operations. The files reportedly included images of an unreleased device, supplier and engineering data, and reports on hardware coating and sealing processes. The filing is part of an ongoing legal dispute in which Apple separately accuses OpenAI of stealing its confidential documents and spying on hardware prototypes.
The DOJ says Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, an OpenAI employee, hid a $14 Seeed Xiao ESP32-S3 Sense device behind a TV in an executive conference room around Sept. 28, concealing it with toilet paper. The device, which includes a microphone, camera sensor and microSD storage, was discovered days later, and Alfozan was reportedly seen checking on it on Oct. 5 before OpenAI security searched his belongings.
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