It seems the overhaul of Apple's AI team is not done yet. In what is its biggest AI-related shakeup so far, the Cupertino giant has announced a replacement for its AI chief, John Giannandrea.
Apple to replace its AI chief with a hire from Microsoft
Apple has just announced that the head of its AI efforts, John Giannandrea, is departing the company.
Giannandrea will be replaced by Microsoft's AI researcher, Amar Subramanya, who will lead Apple's AI efforts as a VP under Craig Federighi.
Tim Cook said in a statement:
"In addition to growing his leadership team and AI responsibilities with Amar’s joining, Craig has been instrumental in driving our AI efforts, including overseeing our work to bring a more personalized Siri to users next year."
We reported in early November that Apple is planning to use a gigantic, albeit tailored, Gemini AI model to power its upcoming revamped Siri. With 1.2 trillion parameters under its belt, the customized Gemini model would "dwarf" the 1.5 billion-parameter, bespoke AI model that Apple currently uses to power Siri in the cloud.
What's more, Apple will reportedly pay Google around $1 billion per year to use Google's proprietary AI technology, forming merely the latest tranche in the ongoing transactional relationship between the two tech giants. After all, Google already pays Apple $20 billion per year for ensuring default search engine privileges within the Safari browser and across other Apple services.
Meanwhile, Apple appears to be bleeding talent left, right, and center, and not just in the highly competitive AI space. In fact, the tech giant's core iPhone design team is also bleeding talent to Jony Ive's io, which was recently acquired by OpenAI in its quest for an "iPhone Killer" device, to be packaged in a screenless, pocket-sized form factor.
According to Gurman, OpenAI has hired around 40 Apple engineers in the last month or so alone! Some of these prominent hires from Apple include Matt Theobald, a manufacturing design expert, and Cyrus Daniel Irani, the lead on human interface design.
This comes as Abidur Chowdhury, the designer of the iPhone Air and a rising star within Apple, has also left his cushy job with the Cupertino giant to pursue a stint at an unnamed AI startup.
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