Former OpenAI researcher and whistleblower found dead at age 26

A 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, Suchir Balaji, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment in recent weeks, CNBC has confirmed.

Balaji left OpenAI earlier this year and raised concerns publicly that the company had allegedly violated U.S. copyright law while developing its popular ChatGPT chatbot.

“The manner of death has been determined to be suicide,” David Serrano Sewell, executive director of San Francisco’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, told CNBC in an email on Friday.

Read the full CNBC story here.

Earlier coverage:

Oct. 2023 story:

After the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Balaji came to the conclusion that OpenAI’s use of copyrighted data violated the law and that technologies like ChatGPT were damaging the internet.