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Ryan Beiermeister, who served as OpenAI\u2019s vice president of product policy, was fired in January after a male colleague accused her of sex discrimination, the Wall Street Journal has reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe allegation that I discriminated against anyone is absolutely false,\u201d Beiermeister told the Journal. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for comment and also contacted an email that appears to be associated with Beiermeister; neither had responded at the time of publication.<\/p>\n Per the Journal\u2019s report, Beiermeister\u2019s termination came after she expressed criticism of a planned ChatGPT feature dubbed \u201cadult mode.\u201d The new mode would introduce erotica into the chatbot user experience. Fidji Simo, who serves as OpenAI\u2019s CEO of Applications \u2014 a role overseeing the company\u2019s consumer-facing products \u2014 has told<\/a> reporters that the new feature is planned to launch during the first quarter of this year.<\/p>\n Beiermeister and others at the company have raised concerns about how the new \u201cadult\u201d feature could potentially impact certain users, according to the report.<\/p>\n OpenAI reportedly said that Beiermeister, who was fired following a leave of absence, had\u00a0\u201cmade valuable contributions during her time at OpenAI, and her departure was not related to any issue she raised while working at the company.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Beiermeister\u2019s LinkedIn profile<\/a> says she previously worked for four years on Meta\u2019s product team and spent more than seven years working for Palantir.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n