The tragedy comes three months after Balaji publicly accused OpenAI of breaching U.S. copyright law in the development of ChatGPT, the highly popular generative artificial intelligence program.
Balaji's death, first reported on December 14 by California's The Mercury News, was ruled a suicide with no foul play suspected. However, his parents dispute the authorities' conclusion.
Balaji's mother, Poornima Rao, has launched an online campaign, claiming a private autopsy did not confirm suicide as the cause of death and urging the FBI to investigate.
Who is Suchir Balaji? His allegations against OpenAI
The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 triggered a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI. Authors, computer programmers, and journalists accused the company of illegally using their copyrighted material to train its AI model, which significantly boosted its market value to over USD 150 billion.
Balaji, who departed from OpenAI in August after a four-year tenure, was a significant figure voicing ethical concerns regarding the use of copyrighted materials to train generative AI models like ChatGPT.
“I recently participated in a New York Times story about fair use and generative AI, and why I’m sceptical ‘fair use’ would be a plausible defence for a lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog post about the nitty-gritty details of fair use and why I believe this,” Balaji had written on X.
In a separate interview with the New York Times, Balaji had described OpenAI’s method of data collection as "harmful."
“If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he said, expressing concern over the training of GPT-4 on massive amounts of internet data.
Balaji was particularly concerned about generative AI systems creating outputs that directly competed with the original copyrighted works used in their training. In a blog post cited by the Chicago Tribune, he stated, “No known factors seem to weigh in favour of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data.”
He also emphasized that this issue was not limited to OpenAI alone, adding, “Fair use and generative AI is a much broader issue than any one product or company.”
The lawsuits against OpenAI, including those filed by prominent media outlets such as The New York Times, alleged that the company’s practices violate copyright laws. Balaji was cited in court documents as possessing “unique and relevant documents” that could support these legal actions.
OpenAI has continually denied the accusations. In a statement reported by the Chicago Tribune, the company stated, “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience.”
The death of Balaji had reignited debates surrounding the ethical and legal ramifications of AI technologies.
Billionaire and X Chairman Elon Musk, who has a contentious relationship with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, reacted to the news with a cryptic post on X (formerly Twitter), simply stating "hmm".
Following Balaji's death, OpenAI issued a statement, saying it was “devastated to learn this incredibly sad news.”
Balaji’s parents claim their son’s death was a “cold-blooded murder.”
His mother, Poornima Rao, shared on X that Balaji was in a “happy mood” during a call with his family just hours before his death. He had recently returned from a vacation with friends.
On December 29, Rao revealed that the family had hired a private investigator and conducted a second autopsy. “The private autopsy doesn’t confirm the cause of death stated by police,” she said.
Rao further alleged that Balaji’s apartment had been “ransacked” and showed “signs of struggle in the bathroom,” adding, “It looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots.”
Rao’s campaign for justice gained significant attention when billionaire Elon Musk responded to her post, stating, “This doesn’t seem like a suicide.”
On Wednesday, Balaji’s parents appeared in a video with investigative journalist George Webb, detailing what they saw in their son’s apartment, including a pool of blood and evidence of a struggle.
Rao also revealed that a pen drive belonging to Balaji is missing. “We lost the pen drive. He had something on it,” she said.