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Indian-American Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former researcher at OpenAI known for his whistleblowing against the company, was found dead in his home in San Francisco on November 26.

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...

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