A former OpenAI research whistleblower, Suchir Balaji, has been found dead at age 26 in his San Francisco apartment. The medical examiner ruled the death as suicide, with police stating there is "no evidence of foul play."

Balaji, who joined OpenAI in 2020, recently exposed alleged copyright violations in the company's AI training practices. He claimed OpenAI illegally scraped copyrighted material to train ChatGPT, contributing to several ongoing lawsuits against the company, including one from The New York Times.

Prior to his death, Balaji provided crucial evidence about OpenAI's data collection methods. In October, he told The NY Times that OpenAI was "harming businesses and entrepreneurs" by using their data without permission to train ChatGPT, stating this was "not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem."

A UC Berkeley computer science graduate, Balaji initially joined OpenAI driven by AI's potential to advance technology and medicine. However, his perspective shifted in 2022 when he became concerned about the company's data gathering practices for GPT-4, which he believed violated U.S. fair use laws.

On November 18, The NY Times named Balaji in federal court filings as someone possessing "unique and relevant documents" to support their case against OpenAI. He was among several current and former OpenAI employees identified as having material evidence for the lawsuit.

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