Apple Rebuilds Siri Team With Vision Pro Veterans After Project Setbacks

Apple brings in new faces from Vision Pro team to reboot Siri, following project delays and mounting competitive pressure

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1 day ago
Summary
  • Apple moves Vision Pro engineers into Siri leadership in a major shake-up aimed at improving performance and catching rivals
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Apple (AAPL, Financial) is overhauling the team behind Siri, with new engineering head Mike Rockwell bringing in fresh leadership from the Vision Pro group, Bloomberg reported.

Rockwell, who took over Siri's engineering in a recent executive shuffle, is replacing several key leaders and reorganizing teams that focus on speech, system performance, and user experience. The goal is to revive Siri's capabilities, which have lagged behind rivals like Google (GOOG, Financial) Assistant and OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Among the incoming talent is Ranjit Desai, a veteran of the Vision Pro effort, now tasked with leading major parts of Siri's engineering, including its platform and systems teams. Olivier Gutknecht, another Vision Pro executive, will oversee Siri's user experience. Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy, both long-serving Apple engineers, are also joining to strengthen Siri's foundational architecture.

Stuart Bowers, who previously managed data and model training, is expanding his role, while longtime Siri leader David Winarsky will lead a new voice and speech group.

Rockwell still leads the visionOS platform and reports to Apple's hardware chief John Ternus. The restructuring follows recent setbacks in Siri's development and marks a shift in strategy as Apple aims to catch up in the voice assistant space.

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