MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X, has announced that she is stepping down after two “incredible” years.
This announcement comes after Musk’s artificial intelligence company said Wednesday that it’s taking down “inappropriate posts” made by its Grok chatbot, which appeared to include antisemitic comments that praised Adolf Hitler.
xAI’s Colossus supercomputer, which runs Grok, is located in southwest Memphis.
Yaccarino made a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that she knew “it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company when she and Elon Musk first spoke on his vision for the platform.”
She released the full post below,
“I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App. I’m incredibly proud of the X team – the historic business turnaround we have accomplished together has been nothing short of remarkable. We started with the critical early work necessary to prioritize the safety of our users, especially children, and to restore advertiser confidence. 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. X is truly a digital town square for all voices and the world’s most powerful culture signal. We couldn’t have achieved that without the support of our users, business partners, and the most innovative team in the world. I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world. As always, I’ll see you on X.”
Elon Musk was the first person to comment under her post, saying, “Thank you for your contributions.”
Grok was developed by Musk’s xAI and pitched as an alternative to “woke AI” interactions from rival chatbots like Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Musk said Friday that Grok has been improved significantly, and users “should notice a difference.”
Since then, Grok has shared several antisemitic posts, including the trope that Jews run Hollywood, and denied that such a stance could be described as Nazism.