Apple's Siri assistant has caught a lot of flak lately for not performing nearly as well as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, but the company may have just made a huge move to change that.
Apple has hired John Giannandrea to run its "machine learning and AI strategy," according to a report from The New York Times. Giannandrea previously spent 10 years at Google working on search and AI, and news that he was leaving Google came out just yesterday.
“Our technology must be infused with the values we all hold dear,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in an internal email about this hiring. “John shares our commitment to privacy and our thoughtful approach as we make computers even smarter and more personal.” Giannandrea will report directly to Cook.
Apple has offered Siri in iOS for years now, but it hasn't been improving at nearly the same rate as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. While Siri can handle functions like answering questions, setting timers and reminders, and telling you sports scores and the weather, it's considered by many to be quite a bit less accurate and powerful than its digital assistant counterparts.
We'll have to wait and see if Giannandrea can help make Siri better so that it's more competitive with Google and Amazon's assistants, but his hiring is certainly exciting news for iOS users.
