Police have recovered the body of Suchir Balaji (26), a former employee of US-based artificial intelligence (AI) company Open AI and the leaker of the company. Balaji's body was recovered from his apartment on Buchanan Street in San Francisco, California. The local police have started an investigation into the incident.
Balaji left OpenAI earlier this year. He publicly expressed concern that the company had violated US copyright laws while creating the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
David Serrano Sewell, executive director of the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, announced Balaji's death in an email to CNBC on Friday. “Suicide is being considered as the cause of death,” the email said. Balaji's relatives have been informed of his death.
The San Francisco Police Department said officers found a dead man in an apartment on Buchanan Street at noon on November 26. A preliminary investigation found no 'evidence of any criminal activity'.
Balaji's death was first reported in the San Jose Mercury News. Balaji's family members have requested privacy in the report.
Balaji suddenly made an explosive comment about OpenAI in an interview given to the American media New York Times last October. In the interview, he said, the company has seriously violated the United States copyright law in the manufacture and marketing of ChatGPT.
He further said, knowing what I know, you would definitely have left the company.
Balaji believed that other chatbots like ChatGPT's would bring economic stability to individuals and organizations that are currently generating digital data and content to train AI systems.
An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed Balaji's death. In an email, he said, 'We are deeply saddened by today's extremely heartbreaking news and extend our heartfelt condolences to Suchir's family at this difficult time.
Suchir Balaji, an Indian-American citizen, worked at OpenAI from 2020 to 2024.
OpenAI is currently involved in legal disputes with several publishers, authors and artists. sued OpenAI for using their copyrighted content as AI training data. A lawsuit was filed last December, in which news organizations are demanding tens of billions of dollars in damages from OpenAI and its major partner, Microsoft.
At an event held this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, 'We don't really need to train our AI models with their data. I think this is something that people don't understand. No particular source of training is so important to us.'
References: CNBC
