In breaking news, John Giannandrea, who joined Apple in 2018, is stepping down from his roles as senior vice president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, and going forward, he will serve as an advisor to the company before his planned retirement in the spring of 2026. Furthermore, renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as Giannandrea’s successor, who will lead essential areas related to both artificial intelligence and machine learning.
This could come as no surprise since Apple has been staggering the AI race. When Apple acquired Siri and introduced that voice assistant on the iPhone 4S in 2011, people criticised Siri for its inaccuracy. Years have passed, and competitors such as Google’s Gemini and Amazon’s Alexa have been “light years” ahead of Siri when it comes to artificial intelligence and machine learning. What makes things worse is that Apple teased Apple Intelligence at WWDC 2024; however, even when it launched as “beta,” many of the features teased back then were not available to the public on day one. Unsurprisingly, Apple faced several lawsuits for false advertising.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen major shakeups within Apple. Back in 2012, Apple launched iOS 6, and the biggest failure from that release was with Apple Maps, which allowed Apple to develop its mapping service instead of relying on Google for the navigation app. Simply put, Apple Maps in iOS 6 was significantly buggy and inaccurate, which led to Apple making a public apology with Tim Cook signing the letter. On the other hand, Scott Forstall, who was Apple’s senior vice president of iOS software, refused to sign the letter, and soon after, Scott Forstall stepped down, and Craig Federighi took over Forstall’s place. Over the past few years, Apple Maps has improved significantly as Apple has added many improvements to the service.
With Subramanya’s newest role at Apple, I’m still hopeful that Siri and Apple Intelligence will get better from here on out, and that Apple will actually catch up in the AI race. It’s rumored that Apple is looking into Google’s Gemini to power Siri. We expect Siri to get a vast improvement as soon as iOS 26.4, which is expected to launch in early 2026.
