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How Apple’s Vision Pro boss is rebuilding Siri from the inside out

Published Apr 22nd, 2025 3:09PM EDT
iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro all-new Siri design
Image: José Adorno for BGR

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Following the report that Apple Vision Pro’s chief is the new head of Siri, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has revealed how Mike Rockwell is revamping Siri’s leadership from the inside out.

These changes came just weeks after Apple had to postpone one of the most important Siri features: on-screen awareness. This would allow Siri to search for information in real time based on what you’re seeing on the screen.

According to Gurman, Rockwell is bringing Vision Pro engineers to lead Siri’s most crucial capabilities, including speech, understanding, performance, and user experience.

Here are some of the key players responsible for transforming Siri into a true personal assistant, according to the journalist’s report:

  • Ranjit Desai: A longtime deputy from the Vision Pro team, Desai will now be responsible for Siri’s engineering. Rockwell highlighted his background in “high-performance, low-latency systems” to elevate Siri’s performance.
  • Olivier Gutknecht: A senior Vision Pro software executive, Gutknecht will take over the team focused on Siri’s user experience.
  • Nate Begeman and Tom Duffy: They will collaborate with Gutknecht to make Siri’s architecture “world-class” and scalable.
  • Stuart Bowers: He leads data, training, and evaluation teams. Bowers will also work on improving Siri’s ability to understand user commands.

These changes are critical to making Siri a better personal assistant and, eventually, an AI powerhouse. Currently, Siri has two teams: one focused on everyday tasks and the other on large language models (LLMs).

Rockwell plans to overhaul Siri’s architecture, using a single LLM-based system to enable a more conversational user interface. This upgrade is expected to take a couple of years.

That said, it seems this might not be a great year for major Apple Intelligence updates during the WWDC 2025 keynote. In fact, it looks like Apple only decided to address Siri’s issues after they became apparent. But with the competition improving rapidly, will Cupertino have enough time to catch up?

José Adorno Tech News Reporter

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.