Apple Brings in New Exec to 'Fix' Siri and Apple Intelligence

Apple is making an internal staffing change that it hopes will improve Siri and its artificial intelligence offerings, reports Bloomberg. Kim Vorrath, a 37-year Apple veteran, will join the AI team to work under AI chief John Giannandrea.

Apple Intelligence General Feature
Vorrath is a program management VP, and has a reputation for meticulously managing software projects at Apple and ensuring employees meet deadlines. She has been described as Apple's "bug wrangler" and as a "powerful force" in the company. For the last few years, she has been working on Apple's AR/VR team developing the Vision Pro headset, but now she is being moved to AI.

The news comes just after a widely circulated story about Siri's failure to accurately provide basic knowledge about Super Bowl results. ‌Siri‌ has long been seen as inferior to other personal assistants, and in recent years, ‌Siri‌ has been unable to measure up to AI-based chatbots.

Apple is also addressing widespread criticism of its Apple Intelligence Notification summary feature, which has on several occasions mistakenly summarized news stories in a way that produced confusing false headlines. To fix the problem, Apple is temporarily removing Notification summaries for news and entertainment apps in iOS 18.3, an update expected next week.

Apple attempted to improve ‌Siri‌ by integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT into ‌Apple Intelligence‌, but there are still serious problems with ‌Siri‌. Additional ‌Siri‌ features are going to be coming in the near future as part of an iOS 18.4 update, and in iOS 19, Apple is rumored to be planning to introduce an LLM version of ‌Siri‌ that will be comparable to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

According to Bloomberg, Vorrath's move to the AI team is a signal that the company sees AI as more important than the Vision Pro. Vorrath is known for organizing engineering groups and redesigning workflows with new processes.

In a memo announcing the change, Giannandrea said that Apple plans to focus on improving the ‌Siri‌ infrastructure as well as Apple's in-house AI models.

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Top Rated Comments

ignatius345 Avatar
3 weeks ago
I think they need to retire the name "Siri" at this point. It's been run into the ground. Start fresh with a new name and a new approach.
Score: 54 Votes (Like | Disagree)
outlawarth Avatar
3 weeks ago
First order of business for the new exec: get rid of the "Here is what I found on the web for you" response.
Score: 33 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kylo83 Avatar
3 weeks ago
I missed the days when Apple was the best at doing everything.
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
scrapesleon Avatar
3 weeks ago
changing executives won't fix the issue with Siri though
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sully54 Avatar
3 weeks ago
I just think its crazy that with all the bugs and issues Apple software has these days, they have someone like Vorrath, a "bug wrangler", working on a niche product like the Vision Pro.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
NT1440 Avatar
3 weeks ago
No one can “fix” generative AI. It is a “yes, and” technology. It just spits out results, and no one should trust they aren’t hallucinations.

This entire field is a dead end and every continued training round (which costs exponentially more) gives diminishing returns.

If you want to automate emails, fine, but this should technology should NEVER be used in any type of critical systems or workflows without a large team of humans to check its work.

None of this is worth the money, ecological resources, or focus the Tech industry and governments have poured into it.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)