Apple Inc. will remove its secret robotics unit from the command of its chief of artificial intelligence, the last upheaval in response to the struggles of the company.
Apple plans to move the robotics team of the IA organization of John Giannandrea to the material division later this month, according to people knowing the move. This will place him under the main vice-president John Ternus, who oversees material engineering, said that people, who have asked not to be identified because the change is not public.
The pending quarter will mark the second major project to be withdrawn from Giannandrea in the last month: the companystrippedThe vocal assistant Siri agitated with his field of March. Changes are part of a wider effort to make up for their delay on artificial intelligence, an area where Apple has lagged behind technological peers such as Google and Openai from Alphabet Inc.
Giannandrea, a former Google executive who is the main vice-president of automatic learning and artificial intelligence strategy, continues to manage most Apple’s IA efforts. And the change will give its group more time to focus on underlying artificial intelligence technology, people said.
A representative of Cupertino, California, Apple refused to comment.
The Siri engineering unit was taken care of by Mike Rockwell, who previously directed hardware and software development for the Vision Pro helmet. As part of this change of management, Rockwell has kept monitoring of the Visionos operating system. He is Replace a large part of the management From Siri with the best deputies of the Vision Pro team, Bloomberg News reported this week.
The robotics team, on the other hand, is morebehind the scenesat Apple. He works on ways to use AI technologies to feed the devices – potentially laying the basics of a new product category. The groupis led byVeteran director Kevin Lynch, who managed Apple Watch software and the now missing autonomous automobile initiative.
As part of the robotics project, Apple plans to publish atable robotWho uses an artificial member to move around an iPad type screen. For further on the future, the group has discussed the construction of mobile machines, including a traveling robot similar to the Amazon Astro. The products are designed to be telepresence devices, which means that they would allow users to go video with others.
Robots quickly emerge as one of the most exciting areas of Silicon Valley, with Tesla Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and other giants investing billions of dollars in the category. After losing ground in a generative AI,Cancel your autonomous car plansAnd arriving late on the smart house market, Apple can poorly face another major category focused on AI.
Apple’s main leaders have confidence in the ability to supervise the project. He is one of the lieutenants of the head of the management of Tim Cook, Tim Cook, and is already in charge of hardware engineering for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Pro Vision and most other products. Many employees believe that it could be Apple’s next CEO – A future change that could occur at a time when robots become more common.
Ternus has already competence on a hardware engineering team managed by leaders Matt Costello and Brian Lynch who work on robotics and technologies from the smart house. The last upheaval also suggests that Apple accelerates work on effort and wants the two groups to be more closely aligned under a single boss.
The relocation of the Lynch unit is also notable because it gives control of tarnish on the operating system and algorithms of tarnish key, groups not managed by the material engineering service. Tarnishbriefly supervisedThe Vision Pro Vision Software Unit until Rockwell has moved with this team to the Organization of Software Engineering. This coincided with Siri’s quarter of management last month.
For Giannandrea, the switch will mark yet another demotion following major delays on Siri’s key features And a lukewarm response to the Apple Intelligence platform. He has now lost hundreds of engineers this year – in Ternus, Rockwell and the Craig Federighi software manager – after Cook has lost confidence in his ability to perform the development of new products.
Changes release the Giannandrea group to focus on the development of underlying models that will feed future Apple products – including upgrades to Apple Intelligence and Siri.
AI and the automatic learning group have laughed at certain employees such as “Aimless“, Has been in shock for months after several delays in Siri’s promising features. People in Apple have also complained of a lax attitude that has slowed engineering and the development of new initiatives. In aHand meeting last monthThe former Apple Siri chief under Giannandrea – Robby Walker – called the “ugly” and “embarrassing” situation.
Giannandrea gave no indication that he planned to leave soon, but the continuous change in responsibilities raised the perspective that the company could prepare a world without the executive at the head of its AI efforts. Eight years after combining Apple’s AI AI teams in a single group with the hiring of Giannandrea, a break from the AI team and ML seems more likely, people said.
This story was initially presented on Fortune.com
