Apple’s new Siri engineering chief is overhauling the management team leading development of the beleaguered voice assistant, taking a step he assured employees would set the company up for success.
Mike Rockwell, head of engineering for the assistant, is replacing much of Siri’s leadership with lieutenants from his Vision Pro software group, according to people with knowledge of the matter. He’s also restructuring teams related to speech, understanding, performance and user experience, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes are private.
Rockwell was named head of Siri engineering last month in a management shake-up that involved stripping away some responsibilities from AI chief John Giannandrea and former Siri head Robby Walker. The move followed project delays and engineering snags, prompting Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook to seek new leadership.
Fixing Siri has become one of the highest-profile challenges at Apple, which first unveiled the voice assistant in 2011. The technology has fallen behind that of rivals like Alphabet’s Google, and OpenAI — and it’s come to represent Apple’s struggles to find its footing in the fast-growing artificial intelligence field.
In one of Rockwell’s first moves, he enlisted Ranjit Desai, a longtime top deputy from the development of the Vision Pro. Desai will now be in charge of much of Siri’s engineering, including the underlying platform and systems groups. Rockwell told staffers that the executive’s background in “high-performance, low-latency systems” would help Siri performance reach a “new level.”
Olivier Gutknecht, a senior Vision Pro software executive, is taking over the team in charge of Siri’s user experience. Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy, veteran Apple software engineering managers, are also joining the Siri team to run underlying architecture. Rockwell says that will lead to “world-class” and “scalable” technology.
Begeman worked on the Vision Pro operating system, and Duffy previously oversaw fundamental elements of the iPhone software as part of a group known as Core OS. They’re considered top software engineering talent who helped bring some of the company’s toughest projects to market.
Stuart Bowers, who has led data, training and evaluation teams, will get an expanded role working on Siri’s ability to figure out how to respond to a user. David Winarsky, a longtime Siri leader, is taking over a new group responsible for all voice and speech-related components.
The moves show that Rockwell is either demoting or replacing the prior managers in charge of Siri engineering. At the same time, he is turning to the people behind the Vision Pro to fix the long-plagued voice assistant.
While Rockwell has taken over Siri, he remains in charge of the visionOS operating system — software that runs on current and future Vision devices. The Vision hardware team is still part of the broader hardware engineering group, reporting to senior executive John Ternus.
A spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.
Apple is moving over the former visionOS software teams belonging to the executives joining Siri to Geoff Stahl, a longtime Rockwell deputy who helps manage software engineering for Vision devices. Rockwell is keeping other visionOS managers in place, including apps head Jeff Norris and software program management lead Haley Allen.
Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning team — mocked as “AI/MLess” by some employees — had been struggling for months with management issues, philosophical disagreements and execution problems.
When the company unveiled its Apple Intelligence platform last June, it announced a series of Siri upgrades, including the service’s ability to tap into a user’s personal data and analyze on-screen content to fulfill commands. The iPhone maker also showed an upgraded version of App Intents, a system for more precisely controlling actions and applications.
Earlier this year, quality and engineering issues forced Apple to postpone the release of that technology to May from April. By March, the company delayed the trio of features indefinitely in a rare retreat. In an internal meeting, the prior head of Siri told staffers the system didn’t work properly as often as a third of the time. He said employees may feel “embarrassed” due to the “ugly” situation.
The current Siri essentially has two brains. One handles longstanding commands, such as setting a timer and other basic tasks. The other one is based on large language models — the core technology behind generative AI — and can execute more advanced jobs.
It’s been a struggle to have both parts of Siri operate at the same time, contributing to quality problems. So Apple is now revamping its architecture to use a single LLM-based system. The approach should enable a more conversational user interface, though the upgrade is expected to take a couple of years.
To bring the new App Intents feature to market — an effort now overseen by Gutknecht — Apple is planning to work directly with large third-party app developers so that the technology works smoothly with their software. It’s also integrating the capabilities deeply into its own apps. The feature should eventually allow a user to trigger a complex series of tasks with a single voice instruction: Siri could, say, find a photo, edit it and send it off via email or iMessage.
The management shuffle began early this year, with Apple moving Kim Vorrath — a veteran software engineering manager known for handling difficult projects — over to the Siri team. She had previously been in charge of project management for the Vision Pro under Rockwell. Now, just months later, she was moved with Rockwell under Craig Federighi, the company’s software engineering chief.
Giannandrea remains Apple’s head of artificial intelligence, reporting directly to Cook. He oversees core AI initiatives, including large language model development, infrastructure teams and testing operations, as well as a “measurement” group focused on improving AI performance. Walker still reports to Giannandrea and remains involved with Siri, although he lost hundreds of engineers to Rockwell.
Given the sales struggles and early bugs tied to the Vision Pro, some employees and industry watchers have questioned the Rockwell takeover of Siri. But while the Vision Pro hasn’t hasn’t been a commercial hit, Rockwell has shown an ability to take on major projects and persuade top leadership to invest heavily. He also created an operating system and product that are considered strong from a technology standpoint.
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