An OpenAI policy executive who opposed the chatbot’s “adult mode” has reportedly been fired, claiming discrimination

Ryan Piermeister, who served as OpenAI’s vice president of product policy, was fired in January after a colleague accused her of sexism, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“The allegation that I discriminated against anyone is completely false,” Biermeister told the newspaper. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment and also contacted the email that appears to be linked to Beiermeister; Neither had responded at the time of publication.

According to the magazine’s report, Beiermeister’s termination came after she expressed criticism of ChatGPT’s planned feature dubbed “Adult Mode.” The new mode will introduce erotica into the chatbot user experience. Fidji Simo, who serves as chief applications officer at OpenAI — a role that oversees the company’s consumer-facing products — told reporters that the new feature is scheduled to launch during the first quarter of this year.

Beiermeister and others at the company raised concerns about how the new “adult” feature might affect some users, according to the report.

OpenAI reportedly said that Beiermeister, who was fired after a leave of absence, “made valuable contributions during her time at OpenAI, and her departure was not related to any issue she raised while working at the company.”

Beiermeister’s LinkedIn profile says she previously worked for four years on the Meta product team and spent more than seven years working at Palantir.