Apple's AI Blunder: Siri's "Restart" Became a Public Relations Disaster
For a company synonymous with innovation, Apple's recent blunders in artificial intelligence have been shocking. Reports are trickling out that paint a picture of why Apple has fallen behind its competitors in a significant tech race.
The $3 Trillion Giant Playing Catch-Up
Flashback to late 2022. ChatGPT stormed the world. Within Apple's Cupertino headquarters, alarm bells were not necessarily ringing. Insiders say John Giannandrea, Apple's chief of AI, downplayed the significance of new chatbot technologies. He said they were of limited value to mainstream consumers. Fast forward several months. Reality hit. Cupertino realized they were in danger of missing the AI wave.
Giannandrea reportedly asked CEO Tim Cook to double the budget to buy high-end GPUs needed to train elaborate AI models. Apple had around 50,000 of the special cards. Competitors like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google were operating in the hundreds of thousands.
Budget Battles and Bottlenecks
Cook signed off. Then CFO Luke Maestry approved less than half the requested budget. This compelled the team to "get by" with what it already possessed. This decision had a ripple effect. Apple had to lease computing power from rivals like Google and Amazon. The most sought-after NVIDIA chips were hard to come by. Apple considered less powerful options for some projects. Resource constraint hampered development speed.
One potential solution – leveraging open-source AI models – was also shut off. Apple executives decided that "Apple" devices could *only* use neural networks developed in-house. This decision added another layer of challenge and slowed things down.
Siri's Identity Crisis: Adrift in AI
Technical challenges were joined by internal leadership battles. Robbie Walker, in charge of Siri, and Sebastian Marino Mes, head of camera software AI, were vying to claim control of Siri's AI integration direction. Sources describe Walker as "lacking ambition and risk-averse," focused on incremental improvement rather than bold advances.
The result was Apple's AI/ML team allegedly earned the internal nickname "AIMLess." Siri itself was called the "hot potato," passed from team to team without a unifying strategy. Tim Cook, seemingly reluctant to issue direct orders on product development, also contributed to this uncertainty.
A Change in Strategy
It seems Apple has finally understood the gravity of the situation. A course correction is underway. Engineers are now permitted to use third-party Large Language Models (LLMs). They are free to work on building user-facing products instead of being fully focused on foundational model development.
There is also reorganization of teams in progress. Mike Rockwell has taken over Siri leadership from Giannandrea. Craig Federighi's software engineering team has allegedly created its own dedicated AI branch, "Intelligent Systems."
Whether these changes will be enough to close the AI gap and revive Siri remains to be seen. Apple's AI journey has been rockier than most individuals outside of the company understood. There is pressure to deliver major innovations fast.
