Report: Robot project also no longer under Apple's AI boss
Apple's personnel restructuring in the AI sector is apparently continuing.
Apple logo in front of a newspaper (illustration): After Siri, AI boss John Giannandrea is now also said to have lost a robot project.
(Image: Generiert mit Midjourney durch Mac & i)
Former Google manager John Giannandrea, head of all artificial intelligence projects at Apple, is said to have handed over another important project after the Siri voice assistant. According to the business news agency Bloomberg, a (still) secret robotics department at Apple is no longer under Giannandrea's control. The project will be transferred to the company's hardware department later this month, headed by the important Senior Vice President (SVP) John Ternus, according to informed sources.
First Siri, now robots?
There seems to be a growing dissatisfaction within Apple with the progress of AI projects. Siri was assigned to a manager from the Vision Pro group after the team under Giannandrea failed to implement announced modern AI functions for the voice assistant, which has been in existence since 2011. There is a feeling that Apple is lagging far behind projects at OpenAI, Anthropic or Google with Apple Intelligence. Giannandrea had previously focused on topics such as machine learning and building privacy-friendly AI at Apple. Among other things, the robotics team is said to be responsible for innovative robotic home devices, of which research prototypes already exist. Apple did not comment on the Bloomberg report.
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Siri had previously been reorganized under Mike Rockwell, who had previously successfully implemented Vision Pro. He brought a number of his own developers with him. Apple had been forced to admit that the new Siri – with context-sensitive functions, app control and screen recognition –, among other things, would take around another year. As a result, there were several class action lawsuits because Apple had advertised the non-existent features as part of the promotion for the iPhone 16.
Apple has some catching up to do on AI
Giannandrea, who has a lot of experience from Google, had built up Apple's AI department quite quietly for a long time – Apple always emphasized that all products included AI functions. However, Giannandrea is considered quite conservative in the field of generative AI, which has been gaining ground since 2022. The manager currently holds the title of Senior Vice President Machine Learning and AI Strategy. He has been with the company since 2018. Before Apple, he spent eight years at Google, where he worked in the Machine Intelligence, Research and Search teams.
There should now be a great deal of confidence in Apple management that Ternus can implement the robot project. He already leads parts of it that are assigned to the hardware engineering team, according to Bloomberg. Now the project is to have a "single boss". According to the report, Ternus will now probably also have control over AI operating system and algorithm teams, which would normally be located in the software area. The robotics team is currently led by Kevin Lynch, formerly of Adobe and known as a successful software boss for the Apple Watch. Apparently, he is to be given more power under Ternus.
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