It’s a wonder Apple’s so-called AI strategist John Giannandrea lasted so long

John Giannandrea at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, 2024, in Cupertino, California
Apple’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, will finally exit the company after seven years at the helm, a move that gave the company’s stock a modest lift as investors interpreted it as a sign of heightened urgency to accelerate AI integration across its devices.
Apple announced in a Monday press release that Giannandrea will “retire” next spring, following a handover period.
Mark Sullivan for Fast Company:
‎

While the reasons for Giannandrea’s departure are no doubt complicated, it’s a wonder he lasted so long. For years, he’s been linked to Apple’s failure to seize on generative AI to improve its Siri voice assistant and make the iPhone and other iDevices smarter and more personalized.
Giannandrea may have made errors in judgment. Reports said he waffled several times on the preferred architecture for Siri—on how much of the assistant’s AI processing should run on the device versus a server in the cloud. But it’s also possible that his plans for integrating artificial intelligence into Apple products encountered friction from other Apple leaders, or were hampered by fears among the leadership team that generative AI would compromise user privacy or create new legal exposure. At any rate, by 2024, Apple’s leadership — including Tim Cook — had lost confidence that Giannandrea’s group could turn AI research into useful (and safe) AI features and products…
Apple poached Giannandrea in 2018 to inject new life into its floundering AI efforts… As the starting gun of the generative AI revolution sounded with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Apple stayed largely silent and remained so, even as its peers raced to develop their own large AI models and apps…
Apple believes Amar Subramanya, the Microsoft executive it has tapped to replace Giannandrea, can and will get things back on track… His hire, along with Giannandrea’s departure, should be read as Apple’s acknowledgment of falling behind its peers in AI—and a signal that it intends to catch up. Interestingly, it was Giannandrea’s departure that got top billing in the press release Apple put out Monday, not the arrival of a new AI chief in Subramanya.

‎
MacDailyNews Take: As with Apple, we have already wasted more than enough time on this guy. Here’s what we wrote on Monday when his “retirement” was announced:
An unmitigated failure.
Steve Jobs would’ve bounced this bozo on the day ChatGPT was released in November 2022.
Giannandrea finally (and ridiculously slowly and gently) being shown the door is better years late than never, we guess.

Apple pays and has been paying John Giannandrea, Senior Vice President of Machine Learning and AI Strategy, millions upon millions of dollars for years. WTF of any import does he really do? WTF of any import has he really delivered? Have you used Siri lately? Yup, it’s still a steaming pile of dogshit.
Where’s Apple’s generative AI, John? “Too hard; too late; look for partners; gimme my paycheck and stock options.”
AAPL shareholders need to start asking real questions of these executives, especially those who are supposedly in charge of Apple’s “AI Strategy,” when the company clearly has none. How about some accountability for once? – MacDailyNews, March 18, 2024

“Tim Cook in his later years seems averse to quickly excising execs when they make massive mistakes, fail to perform, etc.” – MacDailyNews, December 1, 2025

‎
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post It’s a wonder Apple’s so-called AI strategist John Giannandrea lasted so long appeared first on MacDailyNews.