Mike Rockwell, the Apple Vision Pro chief, has replaced John Giannandrea as the executive in charge of Siri, in an executive shakeup to try and rescue Apple’s flailing AI efforts, AppleInsider reported.
The glacial rollout of Apple Intelligence and the lack of progress on Siri has not been a good look for Apple over the last year. Now, Apple is making a big change to get things back on track.
In an announcement to Apple employees due this week, AI lead John Giannandrea is being shifted out of his position, reports Bloomberg on Thursday. CEO Tim Cook has apparently lost confidence in Giannandrea’s ability to execute on Siri’s product development, so he is being replaced.
That replacement will be Mike Rockwell, who his known as the head of the Apple Vision Pro project. In his new role, he will be reporting software chief Craig Federighi, with Giannandrea not having anything to do with Siri anymore.
MacRumors reported: Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman today said that Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell will be taking over the Siri team at Apple, which until now was led by Apple’s artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea. Apple CEO Tim Cook has apparently “lost confidence” in Giannandrea’s ability to “execute on product development,” but he will remain at the company for now to oversee artificial intelligence research and development in general.
Vision Pro hardware engineer Paul Meade will be succeeding Rockwell as the head of Apple’s spatial computing efforts, allowing Rockwell to focus entirely on Siri, according to the report. In his new role overseeing the Siri team, Rockwell will report to Apple’s software engineering chief Craig Federighi, the report added.
Apple has been facing a lot of criticism after delaying its more personalized version of Siri, with some people upset that the company chose to preview new features that were merely conceptual, rather than fully functional. It is a widely held belief that Apple is lagging behind competitors like OpenAI in the generative artificial intelligence space, and it looks like Apple is attempting to right the ship with this executive shakeup.
TechCrunch reported: As Apple’s Siri comes under attack for failing at the most basic queries, the company is shaking up leadership in charge of Apple’s AI features for Siri. According to Bloomberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook is installing Mike Rockwell, the current VP of the Vision Products Group (the team behind the Vision Pro), to head up the Siri team.
Siri hasn’t been able to hold up against modern-day AI, leaving Apple to integrate third-party AI services like ChatGPT, into its software just to keep up with AI’s rapid development and consumer expectations.
In recent tests, Siri users pointed out that Apple Intelligence-powered Siri couldn’t answer simple questions like “who won the Super Bowl?”correctly. This month, Apple also announced it was delaying the rollout of the more “personalized” Siri until sometime next year.