Apple reorganizes Siri department – acquires Vision Pro developer
The new Siri engineering boss Mike Rockwell is taking employees from Apple's Vision Products Group with him. They are to upgrade the voice assistant with AI.
Siri on an iPhone: AI features postponed for a year.
(Image: Wachiwit / Shutterstock)
Following changes at the top of Apple's Siri group, the new head of engineering Mike Rockwell, who is now in charge, has brought employees from his former group into the team. This was reported by the financial news agency Bloomberg. According to the report, “much of the leadership” has been replaced by people who formerly worked in the Vision Products Group, within which Rockwell launched the Vision Pro headset.
Teams reorganized
According to the Bloomberg sources, Rockwell is also said to have reorganized teams from the Siri areas of voice output, speech understanding, performance and user experience and filled them with people he knew. Apple had previously had to announce that important Siri functions would be postponed as part of Apple Intelligence. This could take up to a year. Currently, there is talk that Apple will deliver the features in the fall.
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The addition of functions from the field of generative AI to Siri is currently said to be one of the most important construction sites at Apple. The voice assistant has been around since 2011, but Apple has lost its pioneering role through slow further developments. You still have to know exactly what to ask Siri to be able to use the system to some extent – Chatbot features are provided by OpenAI and (soon) Alibaba.
What happens to the vision?
Rockwell will ultimately take over the position of Siri engineering boss from Apple's AI boss John Giannandrea and his subordinate Robby Walker, who previously headed Siri. Rockwell has already announced his intention to take Siri's performance “to a new level”. Ranjit Desai, former Vision Pro developer, has joined the Siri team. He is an expert in “high-performance systems with low latency”.
The question now is what will happen at the Vision Products Group after Rockwell joins the Siri team. Geoff Stahl, who formerly worked for Rockwell, is to take over the software division. Other visionOS managers are said to have remained on the team unless Rockwell asked them to join the Siri group. Meanwhile, a second model of the Vision Pro is expected at the end of this year or early next year. At the same time, Apple is still working on “real” AR glasses.
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