Apple Just Named A New Ai Chief With Google And Microsoft Expertise, As John Giannandrea Steps Down

In a cautiously worded announcement connected Monday, Apple said John Giannandrea, who has been nan company’s AI main since 2018, is “stepping down” to, well, not activity astatine Apple anymore. He’ll instrumentality astir done outpouring arsenic an advisor.

His replacement is Amar Subramanya, a highly regarded Microsoft executive who spent 16 years astatine Google, astir precocious starring engineering for nan Gemini Assistant. It’s a savvy hire, fixed that Subramanya knows nan title intimately.

The move is being characterized arsenic a shake-up. It was seemingly inevitable successful retrospect. Apple Intelligence, nan company’s reply to nan ChatGPT moment, has been stumbling since its October 2024 launch. Reviews person ranged from “underwhelming” to outright alarmed.

Its first months were immoderate of nan roughest. A notification summary characteristic meant to condense aggregate alerts into digestible snippets generated a bid of embarrassing, untrue headlines successful precocious 2024 and early 2025. Among different missteps, nan BBC complained twice aft Apple Intelligence falsely reported that Luigi Mangione, nan man accused of sidesplitting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had changeable himself (he hadn’t) and that a darts player, Luke Littler, won a title earlier nan last even began.

Then location was Siri’s promised overhaul, which became a achromatic oculus for Apple.

A Bloomberg investigation published successful May revealed nan depths of Apple’s AI struggles. For instance, erstwhile Craig Federighi, Apple’s package chief, tested nan caller Siri connected his ain telephone conscionable weeks earlier its planned motorboat successful April, he was dismayed to find that galore of nan features nan institution had been touting didn’t work. The motorboat was delayed indefinitely, triggering class-action lawsuits from iPhone 16 buyers who’d been promised an AI-powered assistant.

By that point, Giannandrea had already been sidelined, according to Bloomberg. The news statement reported that Tim Cook had stripped Siri from Giannandrea’s oversight wholly backmost successful March, handing it to Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell. Apple removed its secretive robotics section from Giannandrea’s control, too.

Bloomberg’s investigation painted a image of organizational dysfunction, pinch anemic connection betwixt AI and trading teams, fund misalignments, and a activity situation terrible capable that immoderate labor had taken to mockingly calling Giannandrea’s group “AI/MLess.” The study besides documented an exodus of AI researchers to competitors, including OpenAI, Google, and Meta.

Apple is reportedly now leaning connected Google’s Gemini to powerfulness nan adjacent type of Siri, an astonishing and also, presumably, humbling twist considering nan aggravated rivalry betwixt nan 2 companies that dates backmost much than 15 years, crossed mobile operating systems, app stores, browsers, maps, unreality services, smart location devices, and now AI.

Giannandrea came to Apple from Google, wherever he ran Machine Intelligence and Search. At Apple, he oversaw nan AI strategy, instrumentality learning infrastructure, and Siri development.

Now Subramanya inherits those responsibilities, reporting to Federighi pinch a clear instruction to thief Apple drawback up successful AI.

It’s an absorbing infinitesimal for nan company. While competitors person been pouring billions of dollars into monolithic AI information centers, Apple has focused connected processing AI tasks straight connected users’ devices utilizing its civilization Apple Silicon chips, a privacy-first attack that avoids collecting personification data. (When much analyzable requests require unreality processing, Apple routes them done Private Cloud Compute, servers that committedness to process information temporarily and delete it immediately.)

Whether that accuracy pays disconnected aliases whether it has permanently near Apple down is an outstanding question. Apple’s attack comes pinch clear trade-offs. Among them, on-device models are smaller and little tin than nan monolithic models moving successful competitors’ information centers, and Apple’s reluctance to cod personification information has near its researchers training models connected licensed and synthetic information alternatively than nan elephantine troves of real-world accusation that substance its rivals’ systems.