Apple on Tuesday added John Giannandrea, their new Chief of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, to their Leadership page.
Giannandrea came to Apple from Google, where he was the head of their search and artificial intelligence division. Giannandrea spent eight years at Google before joining Apple.
Giannandrea leads the AI and machine learning teams at Apple, reporting directly to company CEO Tim Cook. He also leads the Siri team, taking over the duties from software engineering chief Craig Federighi.
Apple is combining its Core ML and Siri teams under Giannandrea. While the teams’ structure will remain in place, they will report to Giannandrea. Under his guidance, the Cupertino firm will continue to develop its AL and ML teams, focusing on cloud computation, as well as data-sensitive on-device computations.
Giannandrea’s hiring came in the wake of ongoing criticism of Siri, which lags behind virtual assistant offerings from Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, due to Apple’s focus on privacy and the other companies lack of the same.