In a new developing story, developers working on improving Siri and artificial intelligence at Apple have revealed their disdain for the project. A new report from The Information shows that the Apple team handling the development of the Siri App is in chaos over their interest in the project. In other words, "organizational dysfunction and a lack of ambition" is plaguing Apple Siri developers.
The major effect this has caused is that it has made Siri Apple fall behind some of its biggest competitors, such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. The report includes interviews with former employees of the tech giant who confirmed that there's a lack of belief among those working on the Siri App.
More details show it is just a matter of time before Siri's downfall. Apparently, former Apple employees have confirmed that the database on which Siri is built lacks depth and is clunky. They pointed out one of the major defects saying that it takes weeks for basic features to be updated on the Siri App.
Why does Siri have Problems?
According to the report, the major problem apps are having with the development of Siri is retaining their employees. Since many employees are changed from time to time, it makes the project development stall, allowing other competitors to overtake Siri. Three Siri engineers named Srinivasan Venkatachary, Steven Baker, and Anand Shukla were lost to Google despite joining the company in 2019.
They had actually entered the Siri project after Apple acquired their startup called Laserlike. These three engineers were originally working on the search features in Siri before Google came into the picture. Former Google executive John Giannandrea failed to retain these engineers, and that was the start of the issue.
"Inside Apple, Siri remains widely derided for its lack of functionality and improvements since Giannandrea took over. For example, the team building Apple’s mixed-reality headset, including its leader Mike Rockwell, has expressed disappointment in the demonstrations the Siri team created to showcase how the voice assistant could control the headset, according to two people familiar with the matter.
At one point, Rockwell’s team considered building alternative methods for controlling the device using voice commands, the people said (the headset team ultimately ditched that idea)," the report said.
With the three major employees gone, the next major concern for Apple was the gaffes users might experience when using Siri. It led to a lot of concern, as reported by a former employee. The employee pointed out that it was the reason why Apple decided to input a report button where users can report a problem with Siri.
"In an all-hands meeting, leaders of Apple’s AI and the machine-learning team addressed the tensions, agreeing that mistakes were bound to happen and that it was their job to educate Apple’s top executives about how machine-learning models improve. In one example, Giannandrea and the search team led by Venkatachary were finally able to reach a compromise with the Siri design team by creating a button that allowed users to report a concern or an issue with the content of a Siri answer," a former Apple Siri employee said. With competitors making major moves, Apple needs to act fast in fixing the mess around Siri.