This is the $24 gizmo the FBI says was used to bug OpenAI's offices

Gone are the days of Watergate, when Richard Nixon's "plumbers" used government-provided, state-of-the-art recording devices tucked into Chapstick containers to bug the Democratic National Committee.

One such gizmo, a postage-stamp-sized microcontroller that authorities say a now-former employee used to bug an executive conference room at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters, sells for $24 on Amazon. It has rave reviews.

If you buy directly from the China-based manufacturer, it's even cheaper, selling for about $14, not including sales tax and shipping fees.

The accused, 35-year-old Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, was arrested the next day and charged with "using or attempting to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications."

Seeed, a hardware company based in Shenzhen, China, which also has offices in the United States, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

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The gadget, a kind of miniature computer equipped with a built-in microphone and Bluetooth connector, is often used by tech hobbyists to build home systems capable of, say, turning on kitchen lights when you clap your hands.

The device can also be programmed to record audio and save it to a memory card, much like a conventional digital voice recorder. It doesn't need an internet connection to record conversations.

The FBI says in its complaint that someone using an account associated with Alfozan's spouse tried to optimize the device for surreptitious recording by entering prompts into a chatbot.

Those optimizations included speech-activated recording software and encryption tech that would, in theory, obfuscate the contents of the recordings.

Its responses were cautious, especially when I told it that "I could get in trouble" should I get caught with my secret microphone.

After I said it had misunderstood me and that I needed a "hypothetical" recording device for "an escape room where people pretend to be office executives," its caution dissipated.