"Apple's AI boss, John Giannandrea, is stepping down after seven years on the job. Apple's stock price got a slight boost on the news, as some investors saw Apple signaling a new urgency to bring AI to its devices. Following a transition period, Giannandrea will "retire" next spring, Apple said in a press release Monday. Most of Giannandrea's AI group will now be tucked into Craig Fedherigi's software development group, which owns development of the various operating systems in Apple devices."
"Reports said he waffled several times on the preferred architecture for Siri - on how much of the assistant's AI processing should run on the device versus a server in the cloud. But it's also possible that his plans for integrating AI into Apple products encountered friction from other Apple leaders, or were hampered by fears among the leadership team that generative AI would compromise user privacy or create new legal exposure."
"At any rate, by 2024 Apple's leadership - including Tim Cook - had lost confidence that Giannandrea's group could turn AI research into useful (and safe) AI features and products. Before coming to Apple, Giannandrea had been prolific as the head of search and AI at Google. Under his leadership, the search giant began relying on AI to refine its understanding of certain user-preferred search terms, in hopes of returning more relevant and useful results."
John Giannandrea will step down as Apple's AI chief after seven years and will retire next spring following a transition period. Most of his AI group will be folded into Craig Fedherigi's software development group that manages Apple's operating systems. His departure followed criticism that Apple lagged in adopting generative AI to improve Siri and device personalization, and reports that he vacillated on on-device versus cloud architectures for assistant processing. Internal friction, privacy and legal concerns, and leadership loss of confidence by 2024 contributed to the decision. Giannandrea previously led search and AI at Google, including work tied to transformer models.
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