Things are heating up at the top of the Apple food chain. John Giannandrea, vice president of machine learning and AI strategy, has reportedly lost Tim Cook's trust. If the Google defector keeps his job, he will have to hand over the Siri division to someone else, namely Mike Rockwell, according to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg.
A new boss for Siri
Mike Rockwell is no stranger to Apple. Arriving in 2015 in Cupertino, he has a reputation for working on projects from early development to commercialization. As vice president of the Vision Products Group, he finally managed to launch the mixed reality headset on the market. A technological marvel with a mediocre commercial result, but it's still better than the Apple Car, which will never be released!
This ability to deliver the goods despite headwinds is what Apple is looking for, desperately needing to refloat the sinking Siri ship. The version of the assistant boosted by Apple Intelligence has been postponed indefinitely, while the competition is moving forward at full speed. An electric shock is absolutely necessary to restart the machine, and the sooner the better.
Mike Rockwell has pushed Apple hard to improve Siri, notably by giving it more personalized tasks. Internally, he has been considered for some time as a possible successor to John Giannandrea. The latter sees his scope of action significantly reduced. He continues to oversee AI research and technologies, as well as preliminary work on robotics. But this is clearly a punishment for the man who had been one of Google's leading minds for AI development.
This decision to shake up Siri's direction isn't a consequence of the delay in Apple Intelligence features. It was thought out in recent months, when it became clear that the assistant wasn't up to scratch.
Source: Bloomberg
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