X CEO Linda Yaccarino steps down in surprise move amid Elon Musk-owned Grok backlash

X (formerly Twitter) CEO Linda Yaccarino on Wednesday announced that she would be stepping down from her role, thanking owner Elon Musk and her colleagues for “the opportunity of a lifetime”.

Two years ago, the 61-year-old had taken over as the first permanent CEO that Elon Musk hired after his controversial move to purchase the platform in 2022.

“I’m incredibly proud of the X team—the historic business turn around we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable,” she said in an X post.

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Her exit follows Musk's decision to formally merge X with xAI, an artificial intelligence firm that developed Grok, an AI chatbot integrated into the social media platform. However, it is not clear whether she had a direct influence behind the scenes at xAI, which operates Grok.

Brought on in 2023 for damage control purposes after Musk's controversial comments and changes to the platform alienated advertisers, her two-year tenure was marred by the rise of hate content and misinformation online.

This came despite X announcing that it had rolled out additional brand safety controls for advertisers, including the ability to avoid having their ads shown next to “targeted hate speech, sexual content, gratuitous gore, excessive profanity, obscenity, spam, drugs”, a CNN report said.

ALSO READ | Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok deletes posts that praised Hitler and contained racist, anti-Semitic sentiments

“This team has worked relentlessly from groundbreaking innovations like Community Notes, and, soon, X Money to bringing the most iconic voices and content to the platform. Now, the best is yet to come as X enters a new chapter with @xai” Yaccarino explained in her X post.

However, xAI's Grok currently faces immense backlash after it provided numerous responses supporting Adolf Hitler and inciting antisemitism, as well as a number of morbid responses to queries about current affairs. Türkiye has even launched a probe into the chatbot's operations, after it allegedly generated responses insulting religious values, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the statesman and founder of the Republic of Türkiye Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

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