Report: Robot project no longer under Apple’s AI boss

Former Google Manager John Giannandrea, hired at Apple as head of all projects in the field of artificial intelligence, is said to have given another important project according to the voice assistant Siri. Like the economic news agency Bloomberg writesa (still) secret robot department at Apple should no longer be under Giannandreas control. The project will later be affiliated this month to the group’s hardware department, which is headed by the important Senior Vice President (SVP) John Ternus, said districts.

First siri, now robot?

There seems to be increasing dissatisfaction with the progression of AI projects within Apple. Siri had been added to a manager from the Vision Pro Group after the team under Giannandrea had not managed to implement announced modern AI functions for the voice assistant that has existed since 2011. There is a feeling that Apple is clearly behind projects at Openai, Anthropic or Google with Apple Intelligence. Giannandrea had previously taken care of topics such as machine learning and built data protection -friendly AI at Apple. The robot team should be responsible, among other things, for new, robotic home devices from which there are already research prototypes. Apple did not comment on the Bloomberg report.

Siri had previously been reorganized under Mike Rockwell, who had previously successfully implemented the Vision Pro. He brought a number of his own developers. Apple had had to admit that the new Siri-among other things with context-sensitive functions, app control and screen recognition-still needs around a year. Thereupon there were several collecting lawsuits because Apple had advertised the non -existent features as part of the doctorate for the iPhone 16.

Apple has AI catch-up requirement

Giannandrea, who has a lot of experience from Google, had built Apple’s AI department quite silently for a long time-Apple always emphasized that all products included AI functions. In the area of ​​the generative AI, which has been established since 2022, Giannandrea is considered quite conservative. The manager currently has the title “Senior Vice President Machine Learning and Ai Strategy”. He has been in the company since 2018. Before Apple, he worked on Google for eight years, there in the Machine Intelligence, Research and Search teams.

In Apple management, there should now be a lot of trust that Ternus can implement the robot project. He already leads parts of which are assigned to the hardware engineering team, says Bloomberg. Now the project should get a “single boss”. Ternus received, it was said, now also control over AI operating system and algorithm teams, which would normally be located in the software area. The robot team is currently being made by Kevin Lynch, formerly Adobe And known as a successful software boss for the Apple Watch. Apparently this should be granted under Ternus more power.