Suchir Balaji, OpenAI Whistleblower, Found Dead At US Apartment: Report

Suchir Balaji, a former Artificial Intelligence (AI) researcher at OpenAI has been found dead in his San Francisco apartment. He died by suicide, as per the media reports. According to The Mercury News, 26-year-old Suchir Balaji was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on November 26. Balaji worked for OpenAI from November 2020 to August 2024, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Two months ago, in an interview with The New York Times, Balaji alleged OpenAI for violating copyright law.

In a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), dated October 24, Balaji wrote about fair use and generative AI. Talking about his experience of working at OpenAI for four years, including his work on ChatGPT for a year and a half, Balaji concluded that “fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense for a lot of generative AI products.”

“I initially didn’t know much about copyright, fair use, etc. but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against GenAI companies. When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense for a lot of generative AI products, for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they’re trained on (sic),” he wrote.