Suchir Balaji, a 26-year-old former OpenAI researcher, was found dead in his apartment last month. Mr Balaji's death was ruled a suicide, according to the San Francisco Police.
Mr Balaji, who left OpenAI in October 2023, had emerged as a whistleblower against the AI giant. He alleged that the company's AI models were trained on copyrighted material scraped from the internet without authorisation, a practice he argued was harmful.
"If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company," Mr Balaji told the New York Times in an interview.
Mr Balaji explained his concerns further on his personal website, claiming that OpenAI's process of copying data for model training amounted to potential copyright infringement. He noted that while generative models rarely produce outputs identical to their training data, the act of replicating copyrighted material during training could violate laws if not protected under "fair use."
"This is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole," he told the New York Times.
OpenAI disputed his claims, insisting that their data use adhered to fair use principles and legal precedents.
"We build our AI models using publicly available data, in a manner protected by fair use and related principles, and supported by longstanding and widely accepted legal precedents. We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators, and critical for US competitiveness," OpenAI said in a statement.
Mr Balaji spent nearly four years at OpenAI, where he contributed to data collection for the company's flagship product, ChatGPT. After its release in 2022, he began questioning the legal and ethical implications of OpenAI's practices. By mid-2023, he concluded that such AI technologies were damaging to the internet and society, prompting his resignation.
"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," an OpenAI spokesperson was quoted as saying by Forbes.
His death occurred a day after he was named in a court filing as someone whose files OpenAI would search as part of a lawsuit brought by those who sued the AI giant.
