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

Apple’s artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea is resigning from the company. The move comes as the Silicon Valley giant has lagged behind its competitors in introducing generic AI features, especially for its voice assistant Siri. Apple made the announcement on Monday, thanking Giannandrea for his seven-year tenure at the company.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his fellow executive helped the company “build and advance our AI work” and allowed Apple to “continue to innovate.” Giannandrea will be replaced by longtime AI researcher Amar Subramaniam.

Apple launched its flagship AI product suite, Apple Intelligence, in June 2024, but has been slower to overhaul its products with generative AI than competitors like Google. Apple has added incremental features like real-time language translation to its new AirPods earphones, a feature added to Google’s headphones in 2017, and a fitness app that uses AI-generated voices for chat during workouts, but bigger changes are still in the works.

The company has been teasing an AI-forward upgrade to Siri for over a year, but the rollout has been repeatedly postponed.

“This work (on Siri) needs more time to reach our high-quality bar,” Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software engineering, said during the company’s developer conference in June.

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

With Subramaniam’s appointment, Apple is signaling a greater focus on the company’s AI strategy. Subramaniam previously worked as corporate vice president of AI for Microsoft and also spent 16 years at Google, where he was head of engineering for the Gemini AI assistant, which is seen as a pioneer in the industry. He will report to Apple engineering chief Craig Federighi, who has played a larger role working on AI at the company in recent years.

Cook said on Monday that Federighi “has played a key role in advancing our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year”. In its announcement, Apple wrote that this is a “new chapter” for the company as it “reinforces its commitment” to AI.