Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta

[MacRumors]

Apple's artificial intelligence division has lost another senior executive, with Ke Yang, who was recently appointed to lead the company's AI-driven web search effort, departing for Meta, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Yang had only recently taken over Apple's newly created Answers, Knowledge, and Information group, known internally as "AKI." The team is responsible for developing technology to make Siri more ChatGPT-like, including the ability to retrieve live information from the web. The AKI project is said to be a central component of Apple's planned Siri overhaul, which is currently scheduled for release in March 2026. The update is said to include features that were delayed from earlier this year, such as allowing Siri to access personal data and handle more complex, multi-step requests.

Yang's promotion to head of AKI came just weeks ago following the departure of Robby Walker, another longtime Apple executive who had been leading the group. Yang had previously overseen the search-focused portion of AKI before being elevated to lead the division in full, reporting directly to John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy. With Yang's exit, the AKI team will now report to Benoit Dupin, one of Giannandrea's deputies responsible for Apple's machine learning infrastructure.

The AKI project has reportedly become a major element of Apple's efforts to close the gap with rivals such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google Gemini, all of which have made rapid advances in AI-powered search and conversational interfaces. Gurman describes the Answers feature as a new layer of Siri designed to synthesize responses from live internet data, allowing it to deliver up-to-date answers and contextual information.

Yang's departure is the latest in a growing series of exits from Apple's artificial intelligence division, which has reportedly seen more than a dozen senior researchers and engineers leave this year alone. Many of those departures were from the company's Foundation Models team, which is tasked with developing Apple's core generative AI models. That unit was led by Ruoming Pang, who also left for Meta earlier this year to help establish a new research division known as Superintelligence Labs.



Article Link: Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta

 

[tonie walker]

RIP Siri! maybe it’s time to wave the white flag

 

[titanium69]

'So tell us exactly what you did over at Apple's AI departments. We`d like to do the opposite'

 

[stocklen]

When Meta are aggressively offering literally Millions of dollars to these people then they would be foolish to turn that down and you can see why they are leaving.

I think, sadly, that the Market will end up like the search engine one - theres going to be no point each company developing their own - and Siri will probably just end up being a front-end on Gemini anyway.

 

[Apple-achian]

I am sorry to be blunt but Apple should release internal records of these AI employee's failures. Blackball them for having the audacity to not live up to Apple's lofty standards, and jump ship!

 

[one more]

Is this purely money driven? If so, why go work for Apple in the first place, knowing that their AI efforts are trailing behind competition.

 

[Moriakum]

Just buy OpenAI at this point.

 

[spazzcat]

Is this purely money driven? If so, why go work for Apple in the first place, knowing that their AI efforts are trailing behind competition.

Maybe you should ask yourself what is Apple doing that we don't know about that Meta is willing to paying so much to steal their employees ...

 

[t0rqx]

Good luck with the deadline for AI.

PS: This just leaked.

 

[DrJR]

Anyone else happy that Apple is behind in the AI race? They have a strategic advantage of not having corrupted their OS by filling it full of AI gibberish like MS and Android. Privacy is the selling point. "We meant to do this, Simon didn't say".

 

[Populus]

Damn, at this pace, the smarter Siri powered by an Apple LLM won’t come anytime soon…

In my opinion, Apple should keep its focus on local, on-device AI features and eventually a local LLM that does actual work with all you documents and data. Of course, without sending any of those to the cloud. And I think the new M5 is a bold step towards that goal.

 

[erihp]

Odd you’d want to poach folks who clearly aren’t up to the task. Plus since when do senior execs matter.

 

[erihp]

Maybe you should ask yourself what is Apple doing that we don't know about that Meta is willing to paying so much to steal their employees ...

Meta isn’t exactly known for spending money wisely. Ever used the Metaverse? Me either.

 

[remr73jr]

Everything is now money-driven. Anyone in their shoes wouldn’t blink twice at what Meta is offering. Now, the real question is how “lawful” is what Meta is doing and the legality of poaching, and how it will affect the “confidentiality” of what they were doing at Apple? Is what Zuckerberg basically is poaching from every place to in a blatant way “steal” the investment that other companies have achieved in those areas?? And, perhaps it is time to really put all the blame on Tim Cook for not overseen this better? Perhaps since Tim is not a software guy has backfire a lot in this regard? Cause SIRI with all due honesty was positioned to be the major player versus Google and they were them two before chatGPT aka OpenIA came into the game. At that juncture Steve die and with it (it seems now hindsight) died all edge the company had to reinvent themselves and innovate and be creative. It is a shame that it has happened.
Perhaps that’s why the new arrangement to use Gemini between Apple and Google.

 

[Brighton Apple Guy]

I am sorry to be blunt but Apple should release internal records of these AI employee's failures. Blackball them for having the audacity to not live up to Apple's lofty standards, and jump ship!

Apples Software teams haven't had lofty standards for quite some time.

 

[Tig_one]

Considering Siri's state, all these people jumping ship to Meta are a win for Apple.

 

[arvinsim]

In my opinion, Apple should keep focus on local, on-device AI features and eventually a local LLM that does actual work with all you documents and data. Of course, without sending any of those to the cloud. And I think the new M5 is a bold step towards that goal.

That's good and all but if it takes them years to release that feature, I feel that they will be too far behind to matter.

 

[OliOliOliOli]

Yop, go make **** in meta need someone who have a real vision for this product!

 

[ThailandToo]

I am sorry to be blunt but Apple should release internal records of these AI employee's failures. Blackball them for having the audacity to not live up to Apple's lofty standards, and jump ship!

I think the problem is the former CFO. He cut the money for AI in half even though Cook approved it. If you look at the big picture, Apple could afford to pay all of these people but their greed is nonstop out for executives and shareholders only. They don’t care about anyone else. I hope the best employees from Apple leave for companies that will pay them their worth. Right now Crook makes so much more money than all of these people combined. It’s a sad thing by a tech company run like a financial company. They know how to make money in the short term off Steve’s ideas but if Apple keeps running like an investment company. It will be done by true innovators that will disrupt. And AI is likely the biggest disruption we have seen in the last 30 years or maybe ever.

 

[Unami]

I am sorry to be blunt but Apple should release internal records of these AI employee's failures. Blackball them for having the audacity to not live up to Apple's lofty standards, and jump ship!

Yup, release that in detail. It would rather snow in hell, but I wouldn't be surprised if those leaving were expected to fix failures that were caused by company culture and years-long neglect, indecision what to do with Siri and general lack in focus and sophistication and understaffing when it comes to software - e.g. decisions by upper management who is now under pressure and blaming their underlings and expecting the impossible from them.

 

[ThomasJL]

Blame Tim Cook. Siri would likely be the AI industry leader, or at least one of the AI industry leaders, if Cook had not fired Apple’s most Steve Jobs-like visionary, Scott Forstall, in 2012. Forstall introduced Siri in 2011.

 

[jayducharme]

Remember the good ol’ days when Siri was cutting-edge?

 

[maflynn]

Another nail in the apple AI coffin. They can't keep shedding talent and expect to replace them easily without disruption to their plans and timelines

 

[GlassFingers]

It makes me think there must be some problem with management to have such a high turnover. Or they are too locked into some architecture or approach which is inferior. And the employees feel like it’s pointless to continue when the strategy is bad at the root. You need one person or a small group of people with a clear intelligent vision of the way forward….

But it sounds like they just keep flip-flopping around and don’t know what they’re doing.

I would also agree with another who said that Apple is moving too slow slowly on something like AI. Every time you turn around openAI has some new feature ready for the public! Specifically for AI it needs to be a fast and aggressive game.

 

[MajorFubar]

This does remind me of the race 25-30 years ago to be the dominant search engine. Google won that race.
Apple's not even in the running in this AI race. They started off level with the rest (leading, you could argue), but are now too far behind to catch up. They should give up at this point and just do what they historically do best: wait for a dominant leader to emerge then buy them.