Apple’s new Siri engineering chief, Mike Rockwell, is revamping the leadership team behind the beleaguered digital assistant, Mark Gurman reports for Bloomberg News citing “people with knowledge of the matter.” Rockwell, who led Apple’s Vision Products Group, which developed the Apple Vision Pro, is replacing much of Siri’s management with trusted lieutenants from his former group. Additionally, he’s reorganizing teams focused on speech, comprehension, performance, and user experience, according to insiders. These changes aim to streamline development and enhance the capabilities of Apple’s long-neglected Siri digital assistant.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Rockwell was named head of Siri engineering last month in a management shake-up that involved stripping away some responsibilities from AI chief John Giannandrea and former Siri head Robby Walker. The move followed project delays and engineering snags, prompting Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook to seek new leadership.
Fixing Siri has become one of the highest-profile challenges at Apple, which first unveiled the voice assistant in 2011. The technology has fallen behind that of rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI — and it’s come to represent Apple’s struggles to find its footing in the fast-growing artificial intelligence field.
In one of Rockwell’s first moves, he enlisted Ranjit Desai, a longtime top deputy from the development of the Vision Pro. Desai will now be in charge of much of Siri’s engineering, including the underlying platform and systems groups… Olivier Gutknecht, a senior Vision Pro software executive, is taking over the team in charge of Siri’s user experience. Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy, veteran Apple software engineering managers, are also joining the Siri team to run underlying architecture…
Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning team — mocked as “AI/MLess” by some employees — had been struggling for months with management issues, philosophical disagreements and execution problems.
MacDailyNews Take: With Siri now basically holding a full house of negative associations built up over years of neglect, incompetence, and empty promises, perhaps, if Apple actually manages to fix Siri this time around (a big IF; we’ve heard it all before), a rebrand might be useful. Kill off Siri and introduce something new – since it will actually finally be new – in order to allow it to take off on its own without the weighty baggage of the Siri name.
I bought a new iPhone for Siri with Apple Intelligence and all I got was this lousy glow. pic.twitter.com/I0G4Wxf5Im
— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) March 25, 2025
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Restructures Siri team….they had a team? 😉
They need to hire away whoever works on Grok, that thing is pure FIRE!
Here’s an idea for the new and improved Siri – follow Alexis’ and allow different reaction names. Give me more options that “Siri” or “Hey Siri” – how about allowing us to use the name of the device you want to react – “Hey Watch”, “Hey iPhone”, “Hey Mac”, “Hey HomePod” – so every time I say “Hey Siri” every device in my house tries to figure out which one should respond.
Is the writer deceived, or wanting to deceive as many readers as possible with these words:
“The technology has fallen behind that of rivals like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI…” ?
Born in 2011, Siri has always been wanting and inexplicably AAPL management seemed to let her ride like a wild horse in the plains…to be no help to anyone. Sorry for horses insulted.
After updating the latest iOS, I’m asked incessantly if I want to finish updating (setting up Siri). I’ve not used her AT ALL for 3+ yrs and the Siri PTSD (no ill-will to true sufferers) prevents.
I align with the MDN that starting afresh might be a wise idea. Siri will forever have “Idiot” on her forehead. It would take dazzling AI to change her stain and that’s not going well either.