OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati — who has been instrumental in the development of ChatGPT and the artificial intelligence image generator Dall-E — said Wednesday she is leaving the company.

Mira Murati, the chief technology officer at OpenAI, the influential artificial intelligence start-up, said on Wednesday that she would leave the company after working there for more than six years. In a memo she sent to employees and later shared on X,

I’m stepping away because I want to create the time and space to do my own exploration,” Murati told OpenAI staff.