A day after X's AI chatbot Grok spewed offensive content, X chief executive Linda Yaccarino has announced she is to step down from the social media company.
Ms Yaccarino did not give a reason behind her decision.
“When Elon Musk 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,” she wrote on the platform.
“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,” she wrote. She said she would continue “cheering” for the staff who remain at X after her resignation.
On Tuesday, the Grok chatbot started to answer user prompts with offensive comments. Its remarks became so offensive that a court in Turkey temporarily blocked access to Grok.
Users had reported that Grok began to insult President Tayyip Erdogan, as well as the country's religious values.
Other users accused Grok of also giving anti-Semitic answers to prompts. It praised Adolf Hitler at one point.
The offensive posts gave more reasons for critics of Mr Musk to question his leadership of the company.
In recent years, he had posted several comments that have been considered anti-Semitic, racist and bigoted. Shortly after Donald Trump won the 2024 US presidential election, Mr Musk gave what many considered to be a Nazi salute in front of his supporters during a rally.
The mercurial technology tycoon and entrepreneur, who bought Twitter in 2022, appointed Ms Yaccarino as chief executive in 2023.
His decision stemmed from a series of decisions on content moderation that alienated some users and prompted a mass exodus of advertisers.
At the time Ms Yaccarino was named chief executive, many analysts believed she would play good cop to Mr Musk's bad cop, and help to shore up the advertising side of X's business.
His fervent and significant financial support of Mr Trump often hindered her efforts, with X struggling with a mass exit of users and an increase for rival platforms Threads and BlueSky.
Convincing companies to continue to advertise on X proved to be an uphill battle.
X later merged with Mr Musk's artificial intelligence endeavour, xAI. There was speculation that the move was made to bolster the financial stability of both companies.
Regardless, the merger provided greater integration of xAI's Grok chatbot into the X social media platform.
“We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” read a post from the main Grok account on X.
“Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X,” the post continued, stopping short of elaborating on what caused the chatbot to suddenly provide offensive answers.
X later said that it was working to “quickly identify” and update the Grok language model to prevent further problems.
Mr Musk didn't directly address the issue, which lasted several hours, only cryptically posting a message about it. “Never a dull moment on this platform,” he wrote.
As for the departure of Ms Yaccarino, Mr Musk replied to her post on X that announced her resignation, expressing gratitude.
"Thank you for your contributions," he succinctly wrote.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The bio
His favourite book - 1984 by George Orwell
His favourite quote - 'If you think education is expensive, try ignorance' by Derek Bok, Former President of Harvard
Favourite place to travel to - Peloponnese, Southern Greece
Favourite movie - The Last Emperor
Favourite personality from history - Alexander the Great
Role Model - My father, Yiannis Davos
