Dec 1 (Reuters) - Apple on Monday named veteran researcher Amar Subramanya as its vice president of AI, replacing John Giannandrea.
Apple — a laggard in the AI race — has been slow to add AI features to its products in comparison to rivals such as Samsung Electronics, which have been quicker to refresh their devices with AI features.
Subramanya will lead critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML research and will report to software chief Craig Federighi.
He is joining Apple from Microsoft, where he most recently served as corporate vice president of AI. Previously, Subramanya spent 16 years at Google, where he was, among other roles, the head of engineering for the Gemini assistant.
Giannandrea will serve as an adviser to Apple until his retirement in spring next year.
Earlier this year, Apple said that artificial intelligence improvements to its voice assistant Siri would be delayed until 2026.
There have been reports of Apple CEO Tim Cook losing confidence in AI head Giannandrea's ability to execute on product development.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)
