Ryan Beiermeister, who was vice president of product policy at OpenAI, was fired in January after being accused of gender discrimination by a male colleague, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
“The claim that I discriminated against anyone is completely false,” Beiermeister told the Journal. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for comment and also reached out to emails that appear to be related to Beiermeister. Neither had responded at the time of publication.
According to the Journal’s report, Beiermeister’s firing came after she expressed criticism of a planned ChatGPT feature called “Adult Mode.” The new mode introduces erotica to the chatbot user experience. Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of Applications (a role that oversees the company’s consumer-facing products), told reporters that the new features are expected to be released in the first quarter of this year.
According to the report, Beiermeister and others at the company raised concerns about how the new “adult” feature could potentially impact certain users.
OpenAI reportedly stated that Weiermeister, who was fired after taking a leave of absence, “made valuable contributions while working at OpenAI, and her departure was not related to any issues she raised while working at the company.”
According to Beiermeister’s LinkedIn profile, she previously worked on Meta’s product team for four years and at Palantir for more than seven years.
