A former employee of OpenAI, Suchir Balaji, tragically passed away in his apartment last month. According to the *San Francisco Chronicle*, San Francisco police discovered the 26-year-old’s body during a wellness check. The city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed Balaji’s identity and informed his family. They have classified his death as a suicide, with no evidence pointing to foul play.
OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji, who accused the company of breaking copyright law, found dead in apparent suicide pic.twitter.com/VRsCAZwnZN
— BNO News (@BNONews) December 14, 2024
Before his untimely death, Balaji was known for blowing the whistle on OpenAI, accusing the company of breaching U.S. copyright laws with its AI tool, ChatGPT. He joined OpenAI as a researcher in 2022 but soon grew disenchanted with how image and text generation programs operated. Earlier this year, he appeared in an article by the *New York Times*, where he disclosed what he saw as regular fair use violations by ChatGPT. On November 18th, Balaji was mentioned in a federal court letter filed by the outlet, identifying him as possessing “unique and relevant documents” for their ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI.
26-year old OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji, who accused the company of violating copyright law, has been found dead in an apparent suicide.
Below is a screenshot of his last post on X.
Elon Musk on @OpenAI:
“I don't trust OpenAI. I started OpenAI as a non-profit open… pic.twitter.com/e9wbJqNBwc
— J Stewart (@triffic_stuff_) December 14, 2024
In October, Balaji shared on X that he spent nearly four years at OpenAI and worked on ChatGPT for about one and a half years. Initially unfamiliar with copyright issues, he became intrigued after numerous lawsuits were filed against generative AI companies. He concluded that fair use might not be a plausible defense for many generative AI products since they create substitutes competing with their training data.
Currently, both OpenAI and Microsoft are facing several lawsuits alleging copyright infringements through their generative AI technologies. A spokesperson from OpenAI expressed deep sorrow over Balaji’s passing in a statement to Fox News: “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time.”
OpenAI Whistleblower:
10/23 – speaks to the media
11/26 – found dead in apartment
12/3 – Open AI announces the hiring of a Chief Marketing Officer
12/5 – 12 days of OpenAI releases and demos on livestreams begin, yay!
12/13 – Media breaks the storyAnyways, interesting time to… pic.twitter.com/pZ7SMma4Ln
— Zz’rot (@Zzrott1) December 14, 2024
This all sounds pretty fishy, if you ask me. The man was willing to blow the top on corruption happening behind closed doors and then suddenly decided to cancel his life subscription? I don’t buy it.
The director of the office of San Francisco's chief medical examiner, David Serrano Sewell — who declared OpenAI whistleblower Suchar Bilaji's death an "apparent suicide", is currently being sued for "tossing out a human skull ahead of an inspection."
WTF is going on?!! 🤨 pic.twitter.com/SaNjE9BVTJ
— James Li (@5149jamesli) December 14, 2024