Marissa Mayer has defended using her startup’s AI assistant to describe her own daughter, after a New York Times profile drew a wave of criticism online.

The former Yahoo chief executive told Alexandra Alter of The New York Times that her daughter’s teacher had asked for three bullet points on what made the girl special. Mayer asked Dazzle, her company’s AI assistant, instead.

“It came back and was like, your daughter is empathetic, creative and an animal lover,” Mayer told the Times.

Users on X criticised her for handing the question to an AI, as Caitlin Hornik reported for The Independent .

Mayer’s reply

Mayer answered in a post on X on Monday. She thanked the Times for the piece and said she wanted to give more context.

Thank you to @nytimes for yesterday’s piece on Dazzle (@itsdazzleai) and for recognizing our team’s hard work.…