section_path: Controversies/Suicide of Suchir Balaji
section_name: Suicide of Suchir Balaji
paragraph_text: Suicide of Suchir Balaji
  
  Suchir Balaji, a former researcher at OpenAI, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment on November 26, 2024. Independent investigations carried out by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) concluded that Balaji shot himself.
  
  The death occurred 34 days after a New York Times interview in which he accused OpenAI of violating copyright law in developing its commercial LLMs, one of which (GPT-4) he had helped engineer. He was also a likely witness in a major copyright trial against the AI company, and was one of several of its current or former employees named in The New York Times ' s court filings as potentially having documents relevant to the case. The death led to speculation and conspiracy theories suggesting he had been deliberately silenced. Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, California Congressman Ro Khanna, and San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder have publicly echoed Balaji's parents' skepticism and calls for an investigation, as of January, 2025.
  
  In February 2025, the OCME autopsy and SFPD police reports were released. A joint letter from both agencies to the parents' legal team noted that he had purchased the firearm used two years prior to his death, and had recently searched for brain anatomy information on his computer. The letter also highlighted that his apartment's only entrance was dead-bolted from inside with no signs of forced entry.