(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Apple CEO Tim Cook has lost confidence in AI head John Giannandrea and appointed a new leader, Bloomberg reports.
Mike Rockwell, who created the Vision Pro, will now be in charge of revamping Siri, a key component of Apple Intelligence. It promises a more fluid, ChatGPT-like experience as well as the ability to take actions on the user's behalf. (Something Samsung already does on the S25.)
Apple first updated Siri in October with a few minor upgrades. It promised a more full-featured AI assistant this year, but instead we got reports of delay after delay—first from 2025 to 2026 and then to 2027.
"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," Apple told Daring Fireball earlier this month.
It's unclear if Giannandrea will still own the other parts of Apple Intelligence, but Siri is now fully removed from his purview. Rockwell will report to Apple's SVP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, cutting Giannandrea out of Siri's future.
Apple has not announced these changes publicly, but reportedly discussed them at a private meeting with the company's senior leaders. The group, known as the Top 100, met at a "secretive, annual offsite gathering to discuss the future of the company," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says. AI was the topic du jour.
Apple Intelligence's fall debut failed to supercharge iPhone sales. Rival Samsung has pushed forward with launching its AI features across the lineup, including lower-cost phones. The Vision Pro isn't exactly known for being cheap, starting at $3,499, but let's see if Rockwell can successfully bring a better version of Siri to the masses.