Earlier this year The New York Times reported that Apple had made a big new hire: John Giannandrea, at the time Google’s Chief of Search and Artificial Intelligence. Today Giannandrea officially joined the ranks of Apple’s leadership page on Apple.com.
As part of Giannandrea’s employee profile, we learn his official title with Apple: ‘Chief of Machine Learning and AI Strategy.’ He reports directly to Tim Cook and oversees technologies related to Siri and machine learning.
Breaking the news of Giannandrea’s new role, Matthew Panzarino wrote for TechCrunch:
Apple is creating a new AI/ML team that brings together its Core ML and Siri teams under one leader in John Giannandrea.
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The internal structures of the Siri and Core ML teams will remain the same, but they will now answer to Giannandrea. Apple’s internal structure means that the teams will likely remain integrated across the org as they’re wedded to various projects including developer tools, mapping, Core OS and more. ML is everywhere, basically.
The last two years especially, AI and machine learning have been heavy focuses of Apple, particularly on iOS. Giannandrea is a major hire for the company, and while it may take some time for his impact to be seen in user-facing products, bringing together Siri and machine learning teams under this new leader is a key step toward realizing future potential in an area that’s bound to grow more important as time passes.
