CEO of Elon Musk’s X, Linda Yaccarino, resigns

Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of Elon Musk’s X, announced on Wednesday that she is stepping down from the social media platform after two years in the position.

She made the announcement a day after the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot launched into an antisemitic tirade and invoked Adolf Hitler. Yaccarino, who was hired by Musk after he bought the company then known as Twitter in 2022, did not give a reason for her departure Wednesday.

Yaccarino led the social media platform through a tumultuous period as Musk remade Twitter in his vision - which included loosening content rules and reinstating previously banned accounts that spread misinformation and conspiracy theories. Musk himself frequently used his platform, which he renamed X, to spread falsehoods and post about his own right-wing political views on issues such as immigration and crime.

During the 2024 election campaign, the billionaire leveraged the platform to promote Donald Trump, then also used it as a vehicle to tout the controversial budget cuts and layoffs he was spearheading at the US. DOGE Service once Trump took office. In the past month, Musk took to X to air his grievances about the president and his signature tax and spending bill, culminating in a public falling out between the two.

“When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company,” Yaccarino said in her Wednesday post. “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.”

In March, Musk said he sold his social media company to xAI, his artificial intelligence start-up, which runs its chatbot Grok. Musk has described Grok as unfiltered and dedicated to “rigorous pursuit of the truth,” a contrast to other companies’ chatbots that he says are trained on politically correct sources.

Grok has produced a flood of offensive responses recently, days after Musk touted updates that would train it on information that is “politically incorrect, but nonetheless factually true.” The offensive and antisemitic comments this week have alarmed users and leaders around the world.

A Turkish court blocked Grok in the country Wednesday after Grok criticised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, mocked Islam and insulted the founder of Turkey on X.

“I’ll eradicate your family’s roots, water the soil with your blood,” Grok wrote of Erdogan in a since-deleted post, adding that the Turkish president was a “snake.” Under the Turkish penal code, it is a crime to “openly insult the religious values of a section of the public” and denigrate the founder of Turkey. It is also illegal to criticize the president, a law Erdogan has increasingly wielded to clamp down on dissent.

Turkey’s action is the first nationwide ban on an AI chatbot, though Turkey has long sought to restrict certain X accounts and previously threatened to ban X. The country was the top requester of content takedown in the second half of 2024, according to an X transparency report. Turkish officials were to meet with representatives from xAI on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.

Poland also reported X to the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, after the chatbot made antisemitic comments and insulted Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Grok called Tusk “a f---ing traitor” and “an opportunist who sells sovereignty for EU jobs.” Following an investigation, the European Commission could fine X for Grok’s comments.

“We are entering a higher level of hate speech, which is driven by algorithms, and … turning a blind eye or ignoring this today … is a mistake that may cost humanity in the future,” Polish Digitization Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski told RMF FM radio Wednesday. “Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not to artificial intelligence.”

Other countries on the receiving end of Grok’s ire have yet to take action. Israel - “that clingy ex still whining about the Holocaust,” according to Grok - has not commented on the chatbot’s antisemitic posts.

In a statement posted on xAI’s account for Grok, company officials said they are “aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts.” They said they would improve Grok’s training model. On Wednesday, Musk said in a post that “Grok was too compliant to user prompts. Too eager to please and be manipulated, essentially. That is being addressed.”

Yaccarino, NBCUniversal’s former chairman of global advertising and partnerships, did not address the recent controversy in her resignation post Wednesday. Kenny Joseph, associate director of AI and society at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at the University at Buffalo, said Yaccarino’s more traditional media background may not be a good fit for Musk’s AI-centered vision for the company.

“It’s not a media company, but more of a company that is working to build an AI product,” he said.

In her post Wednesday, Yaccarino said 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,” she wrote. I’ll be cheering you all on as you continue to change the world.”

“Thank you for your contributions,” Musk replied.

WASHINGTON POST