Ryan Beiermeister, who served as vice president of product policy for OpenAI, was fired in January after a colleague accused her of gender discrimination, Wall Street Journal reported.
“The allegation that I discriminated against anyone is completely false,” Beiermeister told the Journal. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment and also reached out to an email that appears to be associated with Beiermeister; neither had responded at the time of publication.
The Journal’s report said Beiermeister was fired after she expressed criticism of a planned ChatGPT feature dubbed “adult mode.” The novel mode would introduce eroticism into the chatbot user experience. Fidji Simo, who serves as OpenAI’s general manager for applications – overseeing the company’s consumer-facing products – he said reporters that the launch of the novel function is planned for the first quarter of this year.
The report said Beiermeister and other company employees raised concerns about the potential impact of the novel “adult” feature on some users.
According to OpenAI, Beiermeister, who was fired after her leave, “made valuable contributions during her time at OpenAI, and her departure was unrelated to any issue she raised during her time with the company.”
Beiermeister LinkedIn profile says she previously worked on the Meta product team for four years and spent over seven years at Palantir.