Apple Reshuffles Executives As AI Plans Struggle

Apple is handing the development of its Siri assistant to Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell, removing it from under AI head John Giannandrea, as the company seeks to urgently address failures in the delivery of its Apple Intelligence strategy, Bloomberg reported.

The reshuffle, which was reportedly announced internally to staff after the Bloomberg report, comes after Apple earlier this month acknowledged that new Siri features would be delayed until sometime in “the coming year”, with a further revamp pushed back to next year.

The move comes after Apple chief executive Tim Cook lost confidence in the ability of Giannandrea, a former top Google executive, to deliver on the Siri plans, the Bloomberg report said, citing unnamed sources.

Executive shift

Rockwell, which led the team that developed and launched the Vision Pro headset in February 2024, is one of the few Apple executives to create a major product from scratch.

He will report directly to Apple’s software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri completely from Giannandrea’s authority, the report said.

The shift came after a secretive annual meeting of Apple’s top leaders, but was reportedly in the planning stages for months and predated the latest Siri delays.

Rockwell is to leave the Vision Products Group that developed the Vision Pro, but the Vision Pro software teams will come with Rockwell to Federighi’s software engineering division.

Robby Walker, the Apple manager who led Siri up to now, reportedly told his team at a recent meeting that the delays were “ugly” and he was unsure when key features would arrive, due to competing development priorities.

Giannandrea is to remain at Apple, as the company seeks to avoid any high-profile, public moves that would highlight its AI difficulties, the report said.

Apple is not known for its AI expertise, and Siri had experienced technical problems long before Giannandrea arrived at the company and tried to turn the technology around, the report said. He has successfully brought top AI researchers to Apple and unified its AI work.

AI plans

Siri is a key part of Apple’s AI plans, announced last June, which are intended to compete with AI offerings from Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other leading tech firms.

The company is trying to develop a next-generation version of the tool known as “LLM Siri” that would be based on similar technology to OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini.

The AI features were advertised extensively ahead of the launch of a new generation of iPhones last autumn, but have taken longer than expected to arrive.

Glitches with some of the features have caused further embarrassment, including an AI notification summary feature that was suspended in the UK after repeatedly generating false news headlines.

Investors see AI as key to enticing users to upgrade their iPhones.