Apple Inc. is embarking on a rare executive leadership shake-up to address increasing problems in its artificial intelligence initiatives. CEO Tim Cook has lost confidence in AI head John Giannandrea’s product development efforts, and has made a leadership shift to put the company’s AI strategy back on track, said people familiar with the matter.
Apple Vision Pro headset executive Mike Rockwell is assigned a new position over Siri virtual assistant. The move keeps Siri completely out of Giannandrea’s hands, with Rockwell reporting to software head Craig Federighi. The change was disclosed Thursday internally following an initial report by Bloomberg. The timing also coincides with Apple’s private annual “Top 100” gathering, when high-level executives most recently met to map out the company’s future. Sources indicate AI strategy dominated the agenda for the gatherings, a sign of growing worry inside Apple that it’s getting left behind the pack in this key technology area.
Apple’s AI issues have increasingly come into focus over the past few months. Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI operating system, has been woefully behind schedule and was met with glum enthusiasm even after being billed as the number one selling feature of the iPhone 16. Siri features promised last June have also yet to materialize, like features that would allow the assistant to tap into user information for more personalized responses.
The problem came to a head when Apple continued to air TV commercials touting these unreleased Siri features in a bid to drive iPhone 16 sales despite increasingly serious development issues. Last week, the company once again had to delay these features again, once again piling pressure on managers to close the gap between hype and product.
As part of this shake-up, Rockwell is leaving his current position as leader of the Vision Products Group, although he will be bringing Vision Pro software teams with him to Federighi’s software engineering team. The hardware aspect of the Vision Pro will come under the hardware head, John Ternus, with day-to-day responsibility going to Paul Meade, who was deeply involved in developing the headset.
This shake-up is a rare acknowledgment by Apple that its AI initiative needs a drastic course correction. Apple has generally shown incredible stability at the executive level, so these moves are the more striking by comparison. The reorganization has been seen by industry observers as a key move to counter competitive threats from players such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, which have made huge progress in artificial intelligence in the last year.
For Rockwell, the new challenge represents both an opportunity and a challenge. His success with the Vision Pro demonstrates his expertise at taking complex technologies to market but giving new life to Siri—a product that has been subjected to increasingly severe criticism for falling behind competitors like Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa—is a challenging task.
The company’s spokesperson declined to comment on these leadership changes when contacted.
As Apple prepares to host its Worldwide Developers Conference in June, all eyes will be on whether this shift in leadership can help accelerate the company’s AI efforts more quickly and deliver on commitments to consumers. Getting this right could be crucial to Apple’s ongoing leadership of the high-end tech market, where AI capabilities are becoming ever more of a consumer-driving consideration.
