An Apple reorganization reportedly brings new management to the team struggling to develop an AI-enhanced version of Siri. Apple apparently tapped Mike Rockwell, an exec with one successful Apple product launch already under his belt, to shepherd the promised Siri upgrade.
Clearly, the goal is to accelerate a project that’s been significantly delayed — and has become a major embarrassment for Apple.
Siri takes new leadership from Vision Pro team
When Apple introduced Siri in 2011 with the iPhone 4s, the virtual assistant made waves as a revolutionary example of artificial intelligence in action. Since then, competitors like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant arrived on the scene with far superior capabilities. To make matters worse, Siri seems to be getting stupider over time. (Cult of Mac has been calling for Apple to fix Siri for years.)
Bloomberg reported Thursday on the Apple reorg that might help. Apple put Mike Rockwell in charge of upgrading Siri with artificial intelligence, a project that’s seen by many as critical to Apple’s future.
Later Thursday, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman followed up his news story with an update on the situation.
“Apple has just wrapped up an internal meeting with the AI division announcing these changes, I’m told,” Gurman wrote on X. “It included Craig Federighi, Mike Rockwell, John Giannandrea, Robby Walker and Kim Vorrath. They didn’t take questions but all seemed very positive about the moves.”
Rockwell likely got the challenging job because he led the creation and launch of the Apple Vision Pro. While the AR headset did not become an immediate commercial success, it remains a technological tour de force, with cutting-edge features that easily outstrip rivals.
During the development of the headset, Rockwell had plenty of opportunity to see Siri’s limitations.
“Rockwell hasn’t been shy about criticizing Siri, according to people familiar with the matter,” reported Bloomberg. “For years, he has pitched senior vice presidents on ideas for overhauling the voice assistant to make it more personalized.”
Two people from his team — Kim Vorrath and Aimee Nugent — previously got reassigned to work on the Siri upgrade.
Giannandrea cut out
This means Siri development is no longer under the control of John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy.
“Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development,” Bloomberg reported.
Rockwell supposedly now reports to Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software engineering. Apple apparently removed Giannandrea completely from the Siri project.
AI-enhanced Siri MIA
Apple promised “the start of a new era for Siri” at WWDC24 last June, thanks to a hefty infusion of artificial intelligence. The company laid out a glowing future for the voice assistant, with Siri very nearly being able to do anything users themselves could do. All that would be necessary would be simple voice commands. Apple used the example command “Send the photos from the barbecue on Saturday to Malia” to showcase Siri’s impending power.
Executives committed to launching the smarter Siri in iOS 18, but said it would arrive as part of a later update, not the first release. Many expected the Siri upgrade this spring, but on March 7, the company had to admit, “It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year.”
What makes this such a severe problem for Apple is that last autumn the company began advertising the future Apple Intelligence feature and urged people to buy iPhone 16 models to take advantage of the AI-enhanced Siri. At this point, the iPhone 17 likely will launch before that feature sees the light of day.
Only time will tell if Mike Rockwell can kick development into high gear in his new management role for the floundering project to upgrade Siri. If he can’t, the situation just gets worse for Apple.
We originally published this post at 11:09 a.m. on March 20. We updated the post with new information about Apple’s executive meeting regarding the Siri management shakeup.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
