Siri-us setback: Apple’s AI chief steps down as company lags behind rivals | Apple

Apple’s head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is leaving the company. The move comes as the Silicon Valley giant lags behind rivals in offering productive AI features, particularly voice assistant Siri. Apple did this announcement On Monday, he thanked Giannandrea for his seven-year tenure with the company.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said his fellow executive has helped the company “build and evolve our AI work,” allowing Apple to “continue to innovate.” Giannandrea will be replaced by longtime artificial intelligence researcher Amar Subramanya.

Apple launched its major AI product suite, Apple Intelligence, in June 2024, but has been slow to overhaul its products with generative AI compared to rivals like Google. Apple has added incremental features to its new AirPod headphones, such as real-time language translation, a feature added to Google’s headphones in 2017, and a fitness app that uses AI-generated voice for chats during exercise, but major changes are still being worked out.

The company has been planning an AI-powered upgrade to Siri for more than a year, but its rollout has been delayed repeatedly.

“This job [on Siri] “We needed more time to reach our high quality bar,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software engineering, said at the company’s developer conference in June.

In an earnings call next month, Cook said Apple was “making good progress on a more personalized Siri” and promised a launch next year.

With Subramanya’s appointment, Apple appears to be demonstrating that the company is focusing more tightly on its AI strategy. Subramanya previously worked as Microsoft’s corporate vice president of AI and also spent 16 years at Google, where he led engineering for the Gemini AI Assistant, which is seen as a leader in the industry. He will report to Apple’s head of engineering, Craig Federighi, who has taken on a larger role working on artificial intelligence at the company in recent years.

Cook said in a statement Monday that Federighi “has been instrumental in directing our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year.” Apple wrote in its announcement that this is a “new chapter” for the company and that it “strengthens its commitment” to artificial intelligence.