Ryan Beiermeister, who served as OpenAI’s vice president of product policy, was fired in January after a male colleague accused him of gender discrimination, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The allegation that I’m biased against anyone is completely false,” Beiermeister told the Journal. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for comment and also contacted an email that appears to be associated with Beiermeister; neither responded at the time of publication.

According to the Journal report, Beiermeister’s termination came after he voiced criticism of a planned ChatGPT feature called “adult mode.” The new mode will introduce eroticism to the chatbot user experience. Fidji Simo, who serves as OpenAI’s CEO of Applications – a role that oversees the company’s consumer-facing products – SPOKE reporters that the new feature is planned to be launched during the first quarter of this year.

Beiermeister and others at the company raised concerns about how the new “mature” 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 his time at OpenAI, and his departure is not related to any issues he raised while working for the company.”

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