Apple appoints a new executive to fix Siri
Apple has appointed a 36-year veteran software executive to fix the troubled Siri assistant and advance its various artificial intelligence efforts to catch up to rivals.
Mark Gurman reports on Bloomberg that Kim Vorrath is “whipping artificial intelligence and Siri into shape.” She’s been with Apple for 36 years, most recently serving as a vice president in charge of program management. She’s known for her reputation for “fixing troubled products and bringing major projects to market.”
Vorrath now works in the company’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division as a deputy to former Google executive John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy as of December 2018.
Apple has a new executive who’s supposed to fix Siri
Gurman writes:
Vorrath, who has spent 36 years at Apple, is known for managing the development of tough software projects. She’s also put procedures in place that can catch and fix bugs. Vorrath joins the new team from Apple’s hardware engineering division, where she helped launch the Vision Pro headset.
Vorrath has participated in some of Apple’s most significant projects, including leading project management for the original iPhone software group and later for the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems. She also oversaw program management for the Vision Pro software.
The move signals that AI is now more important than the Vision Pro, which launched in February 2024, and is seen as the biggest challenge within the company, according to a longtime Apple executive who asked not to be identified. Vorrath has a knack for organizing engineering groups and creating an effective workflow with new processes, the executive said.
Most of Siri’s problems are institutional in character. The original Siri team is no longer with Apple, and various rumors have indicated that the Siri team is in chaos, speaking from an organizational perspective.
The problem with Siri
Of course, Siri also suffers from an outdated underlying technology, but Apple has been working on that. Right now, it seems like someone like Vorrath is exactly what the Siri team needs to fix its biggest shortcomings. “Vorrath is poised to bring Apple’s product development culture to the AI work,” a source told Gurman.
Giannandrea, Apple’s AI boss, disclosed the changes in a memo sent to staffers. The memo said the AI team is focused on “revamping the underlying infrastructure of Siri and improving the company’s in-house AI models.” Siri should get new AI smarts in iOS 18.4, which should be released in March or early April.
The upcoming Apple Intelligence enhancements for Siri include the ability to take complex actions across apps through a system called App Intents, onscreen awareness to identify what’s currently on the screen to better understand the context of your questions, the ability to tap into your data, and more.
Apple acquired Siri to get into mobile search
Siri was born out of Apple’s acquisition of the Siri personal assistant nearly 15 years ago for a reported $200 million. At that time, Siri was an utterly impressive AI-powered search app on the App Store that used sophisticated technologies at the time like natural language processing and semantic analysis.
Siri used technology developed at a startup called SRI International, backed by Darpa grants. In December 2007, SRI launched a Siri spin-off to commercialize this technology and bring it to consumers. Apple acquired Siri in April 2010.
As impressive as Siri was, Apple fumbled with fixing its biggest shortcomings in the ensuing years. Unlike OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, artificial intelligence has not been its priority. Apple is still catching up to rivals in this space; Siri remains a disappointment and Apple Intelligence is nothing to write home about.
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