Ryan Beiermeister, OpenAI’s vice president of product policy, was fired in January after a male colleague accused him of sexism, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“Any claim that I discriminated against anyone is completely false,” Beiermeister told the Journal. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for comment as well as emails that appear to be connected to Beyermeister. Neither had responded at the time of publication.
The magazine reported that Beyermeister’s firing came after she voiced criticism of a planned ChatGPT feature called “Adult Mode.” The new mode introduces erotica to the chatbot user experience. Fiji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications (who oversees the company’s consumer products), told reporters that the new features are expected to be released in the first quarter of this year.
Beiermeister and other company officials expressed concerns about how the new “adult” feature could affect certain users, according to the report.
OpenAI reportedly said that Beyermeister, who was fired after taking a leave of absence, “has made valuable contributions during her time at OpenAI, and her departure is unrelated to issues she raised while employed.”
Beiermeister’s LinkedIn profile says she previously worked on Meta’s product team for four years and at Palantir for more than seven years.
