Former project leader Siri left Apple, moved to Microsoft’s AI department

Tram Ho

Bill Stasior, the former head of Apple’s Siri division, will leave the company after nearly a decade of work to join Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division. Although Stasior left Apple in May this year, he only started to come to Microsoft later this month as the Group’s vice president, under Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott. Stassior has been working at Apple for more than 7 years, since 2012.

The departure of the Stasior does not show us the current status of Siri, but it reflects the reality of Apple’s AI department. Last year, the iPhone maker picked up former search leader and Google’s AI, John Giannandrea. With this new staff, Apple has reshaped the projects that they are and will be doing in the field of AI.

The acquisition of Giannandrea is considered an acknowledgment by Apple, that its AI efforts at that time were not enough and should be overhauled – indeed, Siri still lagged behind Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa in terms of sophistication and popularity in the technology industry. Although Siri is integrated into every iPhone model and appears before every other major voice assistant, Amazon and Google have risen to the stage in the race to create AI for consumers, through the accumulation of incorporate their own assistants into smart home products, a segment Apple hasn’t really grasped by its tough stance on user privacy and slowness in penetrating the speaker market. clever.

Cựu lãnh đạo dự án Siri rời Apple, chuyển sang bộ phận AI của Microsoft - Ảnh 1.

Bill Stasior

After Giannandrea was hired last summer and made a significant contribution to the Siri department, he was promoted to Senior Vice President at Apple in December. That means he will be directly under the leadership. CEO Tim Cook, and also undertakes all machine learning and AI projects in general at Apple. That was when Stasior gradually left his daily work in the Siri development team.

Before Giannandrea joined, Stasior had taken over Siri development, and was the Vice President of the division for more than seven years. But Apple is known for regularly transferring the executive leadership of this product. Initially, former iOS software leader Scott Forstall was in charge of Siri, but after he quietly left the controversial Apple Maps company, the role was transferred to the Eddy Cue service leader and then Vice President of Software Development Craig Federighi. Finally, when Giannandrea came to Apple, Siri also had a leader with real knowledge to take charge of, but that also inadvertently led to the departure of Stasior for many unclear reasons.

Interestingly enough, Stasior will join Microsoft – although there is a research department with a lot of talents but also inferior to Amazon and Google in AI projects serving consumers. It is known that Stasior will not be in charge of Cortana, the virtual assistant is showing signs of being spurned by Microsoft and even removed from some of its products (it seems that Microsoft’s new direction for Cortana is growing). it is in the direction of business and conversation. Instead, he will lead an AI development team, and it is unclear what the group will do in the future.

Reference: TheVerge

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Source : Trí Thức Trẻ