On 13th December (local time), San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner confirmed that former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower, 26-year-old Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his apartment. As per the Mercury Times report, he allegedly committed suicide in his apartment located on Buchanan Street in San Francisco. His body was recovered on 26th November 2024 at around 1 PM after a call was made to the police to check his well-being.
Suchir publicly accused OpenAI of violating copyright law
According to the medical examiner’s office, Suchir committed suicide, and police officials found no “evidence of foul play” in the matter. Reportedly, he held information that was expected to play a key role in a lawsuit against OpenAI. Around three months ago, Suchir publicly accused OpenAI of violating US copyright law while developing ChatGPT. For those unaware, ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence program currently used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Official statements from authorities and OpenAI
Speaking to TechCrunch, the medical examiner’s office said, “The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) has identified the decedent as Suchir Balaji, 26, of San Francisco. The manner of death has been determined to be suicide. The OCME has notified the next-of-kin and has no further comment or reports for publication at this time.”
In a statement, OpenAI said, “We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir’s loved ones during this difficult time.”
OpenAI’s copyright controversies
In late 2022, several lawsuits were filed against OpenAI by computer programmers, journalists, and authors, accusing the company of illegally stealing their copyrighted material to train ChatGPT and increase its value beyond USD 150 billion. Over the past year, several news outlets, including The New York Times in the US and ANI in India, have sued OpenAI for copyright infringement.
On 23rd October this year, Suchir argued that OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs by stealing their data to train ChatGPT. He said, “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company. This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.”
Suchir Balaji’s views on AI
During an interview with The New York Times, Suchir revealed that he initially believed AI could benefit society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop ageing. He said, “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them.”
However, his views about AI began to change in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He expressed concerns about his assignment to gather data from the internet for ChatGPT’s fourth version, which analysed text from nearly the entire internet to train the program.
In late October, in a post on Suchir’s personal website, he wrote that no known factors seemed to weigh in favour of the AI software being a fair use of its training data. He wrote, “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.”
I recently participated in a NYT story about fair use and generative AI, and why I'm skeptical "fair use" would be a plausible defense for a lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog post (https://t.co/xhiVyCk2Vk) about the nitty-gritty details of fair use and why I…
— Suchir Balaji (@suchirbalaji) October 23, 2024
Legal implications and role in lawsuits
Notably, on 18th November, the attorneys of The New York Times filed a letter in federal court naming Suchir Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant” documents that could have supported the news outlet’s case against the AI company. The paper also named 11 other past and present employees of the company who might have material helpful in the case.
Rise of ChatGPT and AI challenges
ChatGPT was released in 2022. In a short span, it has become a worldwide sensation, challenging other companies to release similar platforms, such as Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter), which has developed its own AI engine, Grok. These AI engines analyse vast amounts of data from the internet to generate answers for prompts submitted by users, creating text, images, and videos. With time, AI is becoming more intelligent, posing challenges to writers, editors, artists, journalists, authors, and coders, among others.
Ongoing copyright disputes
In the case against OpenAI, news outlets have argued that the company plagiarised and stole articles, undermining their business models. The lawsuit stated, “Microsoft and OpenAI simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely.”
However, the company has refuted the claims, stressing that the work done by OpenAI to train ChatGPT remains under “fair use” laws. The company said, “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience.”
