Mike Rockwell, the Apple Vision Pro chief, has replaced John Giannandrea as the executive in charge of Siri, in an executive shakeup to try and rescue Apple’s flailing AI efforts.
The glacial rollout of Apple Intelligence and the lack of progress on Siri has not been a good look for Apple over the last year. Now, Apple is making a big change to get things back on track.
In an announcement to Apple employees due this week, AI lead John Giannandrea is being shifted out of his position, reports Bloomberg on Thursday. CEO Tim Cook has apparently lost confidence in Giannandrea’s ability to execute on Siri’s product development, so he is being replaced.
That replacement will be Mike Rockwell, who is known as the head of the Apple Vision Pro project. In his new role, he will be reporting to software chief Craig Federighi, with Giannandrea not having anything to do with Siri anymore.
With Rockwell’s move over to Siri, the role of the head of Apple Vision Pro will be handed to Paul Meade, who previously worked on hardware engineering for the Vision Pro.
Ugly delays and embarrassment
While the rollout of Apple Intelligence has been slow, the lack of progress on Siri is a massive issue for Apple. With the lack of progress on features promised during WWDC 2024 and the introduction of delays, this has led to considerable internal embarrassment over the failure.
Apple has held internal meetings to try and right the ship, and has also admitted that features are happening on a slower timescale than it previously anticipated, but drastic action had to be taken.
During a recent meeting, Giannandrea told his team that the delays were “ugly” and acknowledged the staff’s embarrassment and anger. There was also uncertainty about when features would actually arrive, in part due to other development priorities.
A bet on experience
By choosing Rockwell, Apple is betting that his technical experience and in shipping new products and a team of thousands will help get Siri’s delays under control. A problem-solver, Rockwell had to deal with various issues to get the Apple Vision Pro to market, with some problems needing the aid of artificial intelligence.
Now, he’s going to be working to improve Apple’s AI efforts even more. Given he is one of the few Apple executives to go from “zero to one” on a hardware device, he has an experience that few others can boast about.
This should all help Rockwell take control at the helm of Siri, despite him lacking the background of the AI-centric Giannandrea.
Giannandrea will still be working within Apple, despite losing his Siri work. He has other responsibilities, including research and development of other AI-related technologies, along with robotics.
