Siri has gotten its fair share of scrutiny over the years, with many believing it’s falling behind in the smart assistant game despite being the first major company to market with the technology. Bill Stasior, who was responsible for Siri over the last seven years, has recently left the company.
According to a report from The Information, Stasior joined the Siri team in 2012, focusing on leading the group. This was after two of Siri’s creators had left the team, however, they remained at Apple working on other projects.
Stasior leaving the company is likely an effort by John Giannandrea, who is now Apple’s SVP of machine learning and AI strategy, after leaving Google earlier last year.
The report also says that Giannandrea’s team is now focusing on long-term research versus the short-term incremental updates Siri has been seeing over the past several years. He’s still looking for someone to lead the Siri team, however.
With the new focus on long-term research, it’s highly unlikely that we’ll see any major improvement in Siri this year with iOS 13, if any at all. However, under Giannandrea’s leadership, Siri may finally be getting the help it needs to become a great voice assistant, even if that means waiting another year to see improvements.
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