Suchir Balaji, a former Open AI researcher who quit the company in August and accused it of copyright violations, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26. According to news reports, the medical examiner determined the death to be by suicide and the police currently see no evidence of foul play. Responding to the news about Balaji’s demise, an OpenAI spokesperson said in an email statement to CNBC, “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.”
Balaji, 26, grew up in Cupertino and studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a researcher at OpenAI for four years, of which he spent a year and a half helping build ChatGPT. He quit the company in August, alleging that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted material to train the highly popular ChatGPT did not meet the standards of fair use.
In a New York Times profile published in October, Balaji said he initially did not understand much about copyright and fair use but became interested when GenAI companies, including OpenAI, were hit by a barrage of lawsuits filed by individuals and organizations, including authors, creators, and media outlets.
According to the NYT report on Balaji, he is among the first employees to quit a major AI company and reveal how GenAI companies use copyrighted material to build their products. GenAI companies, including Open AI, have denied the allegations and disagreed with Balaji’s take on fair use, the article reported.
In his last social media post on X (his profile is unverified) on October 23, Balaji mentions the NYT article, and says that he had approached the Times with the story and not the other way round, given that the newspaper has also sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. He posted on his blog detailed reasons for his decision to oppose how AI companies are using copyrighted data to train their models.
The Business Insider reported on Sunday, December 15, that the Times had asked a judge to add Balaji’s name as “custodian” in their lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft.
This is a developing story.