Apple's AI team has once again been "precisely poached" by Meta, as the core head of the new Siri has resigned

According to Zhitong Finance APP, an executive responsible for developing artificial intelligence network search at Apple is about to resign, marking the latest in a series of high-profile departures from the company's AI department. According to insiders, Ke Yang, an executive from Apple's AKI team, will move to Meta Platforms (META.US). Just a few weeks ago, he was appointed as the head of the team. The team is developing features that bring Siri's voice assistant capabilities closer to ChatGPT by adding functionality to extract information from the web.

This team is at the core of a major overhaul of Siri planned for March, which is part of Apple's broader effort to revitalize its struggling AI business. The new version of Siri will also include features that were postponed earlier this year, such as using personal data to handle more complex requests. In particular, the Answers feature aims to help Apple compete better in the AI search market against OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google's (GOOGL.US) Gemini—an area that has rapidly gained attention among smartphone and computer users.

Ke Yang recently became a direct subordinate of Apple's Senior Vice President of AI and Machine Learning, John Giannandrea. Before taking over the entire department, he led the search-focused part of the AKI department—previously, the former head of the department, Robby Walker, had resigned. The new Siri is being jointly developed by Apple's AI and Machine Learning team (AIML) and the Siri engineering team currently overseen by Craig Federighi's software organization.

Within AIML, Ke Yang is regarded as the most prominent executive on the new Siri project. His departure is one of the biggest exit events in Apple's AI department this year—during this period, top researchers of Apple's core AI models have been continuously leaving.

About a dozen members of the team have left, including its founder and chief scientist, Ruoming Pang. Ruoming Pang and several others have also joined Meta, which is forming a new team called the "Super Intelligence Lab." Several remaining members of the Apple team are expected to leave in the coming months.

Apple researcher Sam Wiseman, based in New York, left earlier this month to join Reflection AI. One of Apple's most senior researchers, Chong Wang, also left the company last week to join Meta.

In August, the social networking giant hired another senior leader from Apple's AI department, Frank Chu, who also leads the AI team related to search.

Apple is striving to catch up with OpenAI and Google, both of which have rapidly developed in the fields of generative AI and search, and the continuous departures of these executives highlight the instability within Apple's AI team. Reports indicate that Apple has also been externally recruiting a successor for Giannandrea With the departure of Ke Yang, the AKI team will be transferred under the leadership of Giannandrea's deputy Benoit Dupin, who is responsible for overseeing Apple's machine learning-related cloud infrastructure