Apple executive Ke Yang, who is leading the iPhone maker’s efforts to build AI-driven web search, is going meta, Bloomberg reports.
Yang’s departure is the latest in a series of departures from Apple’s AI division, putting the company in jeopardy ahead of a long-awaited Siri overhaul scheduled for March. Ruoming Pang, Apple’s former head of AI modeling, left for Meta earlier this year. Approximately a dozen team members from Apple’s AIML (AI and machine learning) team have also left the company. Several members have joined Meta’s new Superintelligence Institute.
Yang began overseeing the Answers, Knowledge, and Information (AKI) team a few weeks ago. The team is tasked with improving Siri’s capabilities by allowing it to retrieve information from the web, allowing Apple to better compete with rivals in the AI search market such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google. The new Siri also promises to be able to utilize personal data for more complex tasks.
The rest of Apple’s team expects more AI team members to jump on in the coming months, Bloomberg reports.
TechCrunch has reached out to Apple and Meta for comment.
