Apple has taken another project from under its artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea, who will no longer oversee Apple’s secret robotics division, according to a report from Bloomberg.
After Apple’s AI team failed to deliver numerous Apple Intelligence features for Sir on time, Apple too Siri development away from Giannandrea, moving the team under Apple Vision Pro head Mike Rockwell, who will not oversee the Siri team and any future Siri development.
Now Apple is making a similar move with its secret robotics team, transitioning it to the hardware division where it will be headed by Apple senior vice president John Ternus in place of Giannandrea. Giannandrea will continue to head up Apple’s AI and machine learning teams, and his team will now have more time to focus on new artificial intelligence features. The move means Giannandreais now managing hundreds fewer engineers, whic indicates that Apple leadership does not have confidence that he can head multiple teams.
Managment changes were needed to allow the company to prioritized Apple Intelligence development, as it struggles to keep up with OpenAI, Google, and other AI players that are miles ahead of Apple when it comes to AI.
Kevin Lynch, who headed the Apple Watch and now-cancelled Apple Car projects, is leading the robotics team, which has several robotics projects in the works. This includes a a tabletop robot with an arm that can move around an iPad-style display.
Ternus has worked on some of Apple’s biggest products, heading the hardware engineering teams for the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other devices. Due to the fact that he already oversees a team that is developing robotocs and smart home technologies, the move could indicate that the Cupertino firm is ramping up robot development.
