Amar Subramanya will replace John Giannandrea after firm has struggled to catch up with AI rollouts by competitors
Apple’s head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is stepping down from the company. The move comes as the Silicon Valley giant has lagged behind its competitors in rolling out generative AI features, in particular its voice assistant Siri. Apple made the announcement on Monday, thanking Giannandrea for his seven-year tenure at the company.
Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said his fellow executive helped the company “in building and advancing our AI work” and allowing Apple to “continue to innovate”. Giannandrea will be replaced by longtime AI researcher Amar Subramanya.
Apple debuted its marquee AI product suite, Apple Intelligence, in June 2024, but has been slow to overhaul its products with generative AI in comparison to competitors such as Google. Apple has added incremental features, such as real-time language translation in its new AirPod earphones, a feature Google’s headphones added in 2017, and a fitness app that uses an AI-generated voice for chats during workouts, but major changes are still in the works.
The company has teased an AI-forward upgrade to Siri for more than a year, but the rollout has repeatedly been postponed.
