Apple Overhauls AI Leadership To Revamp Siri

Apple Inc. has undergone a strange reshuffle in executive ranks, aiming to reinvigorate artificial intelligence aspirations after several months of experiencing hitches, as per sources familiar with the matter.

CEO Tim Cook does not feel like AI leader John Giannandrea has it in him to push products further. Hence Cook is bringing a different senior executive, Mike Rockwell, creator of Vision Pro, to help in this area. Rockwell now heads the Siri virtual assistant under a newly created position, according to insiders who asked for anonymity because these changes have yet to be announced.

Rockwell will report directly to software chief Craig Federighi, effectively taking Siri out of Giannandrea’s jurisdiction. Apple informed its employees regarding these moves on Thursday, however, after the initial reports by Bloomberg News.

The senior leadership team, the so-called Top 100, just had their secret annual offsite meeting and among the topics discussed regarding the future of the company was AI developments, according to Bloomberg.

Those changes point out the obstacles facing Apple: the company’s AI technology is far behind its competition, and not many signals exist that it is poised to catch up. The platform, Apple Intelligence, was late in coming out, and it has mostly been a dismal failure, although it is sold as the primary selling point for the iPhone 16.

Currently, Rockwell serves as vice president at the Vision Products Group (VPG), the branch of the department creating the headset for Apple. This transfer also means he will leave that team, but the software organizations around Vision Pro have been transferred to Federighi’s software engineering division. The hardware team will continue to operate under John Ternus and report to Paul Meade, a hardware engineering executive involved with Vision Pro. A spokesperson for Apple has declined to comment on or address these developments