SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing about the blockbuster artificial intelligence company that faced a barrage of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week.

Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead in his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. Police were called to the Lower Haight residence about 1 p.m. that day after receiving a call requesting officers to inquire about his welfare, a police spokesman said.

The coroner’s office determined the manner of death was suicide, and police officials said this week there was “no evidence of foul play at this time.”

The information he had was expected to play a key role in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company.

Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law in its development of ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a money-making sensation, used by hundreds of millions of people on the used all over the world.

Its release in late 2022 sparked a flood of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists who claim the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and boost its value to over $150 billion.

Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, that sued OpenAI last year.

In an interview with The New York Times published on October 23, Balaji argued that OpenAI harms companies and entrepreneurs whose data was used to train ChatGPT.

“If you believe what I believe, you just need to leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

Balaji grew up in Cupertino before studying computer science at UC Berkeley. At the time, he believed in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure disease and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent a scientist who could help solve these problems,” he told the newspaper.

But in 2022, two years after he joined OpenAI as a researcher, his prospects began to deteriorate. He was particularly concerned about his assignment to collect data from the Internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire Internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported.

The practice, he told the Times, violates the country’s “fair use” laws, which govern how people can use previously published works. In late October, he published an analysis on his personal website making this point.

No known factors “seem to support ChatGPT’s fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are inherently specific to ChatGPT, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a variety of areas.”

Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy as she mourned her son’s death.

In a letter filed in federal court on November 18, lawyers for the New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them former or current OpenAI employees — the newspaper named in court filings ahead of the testimony as having material helpful to its case.

Generative artificial intelligence programs analyze huge amounts of data from the Internet and use them to respond to user input or to create text, images or videos.

When OpenAI released its ChatGPT program in late 2022, it spurred an industry of companies looking to write essays, create art, and create computer code. Many of the world’s most valuable companies today are in the field of artificial intelligence or produce the computer chips needed to run these programs. OpenAI’s own value has almost doubled in the past year.

News outlets have argued that OpenAI and Microsoft — which does business with OpenAI and was also sued by The Mercury News — plagiarized and stole its articles, undermining their business models.

“Microsoft and OpenAI are simply taking over the work product of reporters, journalists, editors, copy editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers – all without regard to the efforts, let alone the legal rights, of those who create and publish them. “News that local communities rely on,” the newspaper’s lawsuit states.

OpenAI has strongly denied these claims and emphasized that all of its work remains legal under fair use laws.

“We see tremendous potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and improve the news experience,” the company said in filing the lawsuit.

If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of depression or suicidal thoughts, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline offers free 24/7 support, information and resources. Call or text Lifeline on 988 or visit 988lifeline.org where chat is available.

Jakob Rodgers is a veteran breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message on Signal at 510-390-2351 or email him at [email protected].

Originally published: December 13, 2024 at 1:12 pm PST