[ad_1]
Bill Stasior, the former head of Apple's Siri division, leaves the company after nearly a decade to join the division of artificial intelligence of Microsoft, announced L & # 39; information. Although Stasior left Apple in May, he joined Microsoft later this month as vice president of the company, reporting to chief technology officer Kevin Scott. Stassior worked at Apple for more than seven years and joined the group in 2012.
Stasior's departure seems less an indictment against Siri's current state than a reflection of AI's reality at Apple. Last year, the iPhone maker poached John Giannandrea on Google, where he was previously responsible for research and AI. This has reshaped the way Apple works on AI.
At the time of Giannandrea's hiring, the move was considered a recognition by Apple that its current AI efforts were mediocre and need to be revamped, as evidenced by the fact that Siri is far behind Google Assistant and Alexa in the sophistication and adoption of the sector. Although Siri resides in every iPhone and comes before any other major voice assistant, Amazon and Google have dominated the mainstream AI race by integrating their respective assistants into smart home products, an area in which Apple has has fallen behind due to its stricter user privacy positions and its delayed entry into the smart speaker market.
After Giannandrea took a more active role in the Siri division when he was hired last summer, he was later promoted to Senior Vice President at Apple in December. This meant that he reported directly to CEO Tim Cook, and that he was also responsible for all of the Machine Learning and General AI projects at Apple. according to L & # 39; information, this promotion led Stasior to abandon the daily tasks of the Siri team.
Prior to joining Giannandrea, Stasior was responsible for leading Siri, who was vice-president of the division for more than seven years. But Apple has effectively thrown at the head of the management the product as a hot potato. The former iOS software manager, Scott Forstall, was originally to supervise Siri, but after leaving the company informally following the controversial Apple Maps fiasco, the role was assigned to Chief Eddy Cue and then vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi. Finally, when Giannandrea became a member of the delegation, Siri had an appropriate framework to supervise her, but this seems to have led to Stasior's departure for unknown reasons.
It is worth noting that Stasior joins Microsoft which, despite a robust research division, has also fallen far behind Amazon and Google with respect to mainstream artificial intelligence projects. however, L & # 39; information According to his information, Stasior will not work on Cortana, Microsoft's voice assistant, which he has increasingly ignored recently and even, in some cases, withdrawn products. (Microsoft's new vision for Cortana is to make it seem more business-oriented and conversational.) Instead, he will lead an AI group, although it is unclear exactly what he will be working on.
[ad_2]
Source link