Days after San Francisco Police closed the criminal investigation file regarding the death of former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji by releasing final autopsy report and terming it as “suicide”, the family of Balaji has rejected the report, calling for a fresh probe.
On February 15, the San Francisco police submitted an autopsy report along with a letter to the family of 26-year-old Suchir Balaji, who was found dead in his apartment in November last year. Suchir was a former researcher with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, who had quit the company in early 2024 and turned into a whistleblower complaining about OpenAI violating copyright laws of artists and creators.
According to police officials, the exact cause of death in the autopsy report showed as “self inflicted gunshot wound”. According to Hindustan Times, the San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, wrote a letter to Balaji’s parents stating “there is insufficient evidence to find Mr. Balaji’s death was the result of homicide.” However, Balaji’s parents have demanded an FBI investigation into the case.
On Tuesday, Suchir’s mother Poornima Rao strongly objected to the final autopsy report submitted by San Francisco Police and claimed that it has several loopholes.
“We received the autopsy report last Friday. Our counsel and we disagree with their decision. There are tons of inconsistencies in their decision. Underlying assumptions are not supporting the facts in reports. We continue our investigation. We have sent the hair found in the apartment for testing. We are fighting for justice and not back up,” said Rao, mother of Suchir Balaji, in her X post.
Suchir Balaji had turned into a whistleblower against the policies of OpenAI and openly criticized the “fair use” policy of the company where they could use original work of artists, journalists and other content creators to train their AI models. While the San Francisco Police might have closed their investigation into the case, the controversy refused to die down.
Also Read: Portrait of a Whistleblower: Suchir Warned Us About Perils of AI
