Apple is shaking up its executive team in light of ongoing struggles to roll out advanced Apple Intelligence features for Siri. Bloomberg reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook “has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development.”
As such, Mike Rockwell, current vice president of the Vision Products Group and creator of Apple Vision Pro, is taking the reigns of the Siri team.
Giannanndrea is not leaving Apple, but Siri is being completely removed from his responsibilities. He will continue to oversee research, testing, and other AI-related technologies. Rockwell will report to Apple’s software boss, Craig Fderighi. According to the report, Giannanndrea “long considered Rockwell a potential successor.”
The report also says another “senior manager” from Rockwell’s team is moving to the Siri group:
In the past several days, Apple started moving over another senior manager from Rockwell’s team — Aimee Nugent — to the Siri group. Like Vorrath, she has a reputation for fixing challenging projects. The changes allowed two of Rockwell’s trusted executives to evaluate the organization before he became heavily involved.
Inside Apple, Rockwell hasn’t been shy about criticizing Siri, according to people familiar with the matter. For years, he has pitched senior vice presidents on ideas for overhauling the voice assistant to make it more personalized. He has also been advising the AI group in recent weeks.
With Rockwell shifting to the Siri team, Paul Meade will take over the Apple Vision Pro team. Meade previously led hardware engineering for Vision Pro and worked under Rockwell.
Today’s news follows a report from The Information in April 2023 that described the internal turmoil plaguing the Siri team. Most notably, the report said that the Apple Vision Pro team had expressed frustration with Siri. Mike Rockwell even “considered building alternative methods for controlling the device using voice commands.”
Read the full report at Bloomberg.
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