Apple's senior director of artificial intelligence and search technology, Robbie Walker, plans to leave the company next month, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.
Walker led the development of Siri until earlier this year. In February, control of Siri was handed over to software chief Craig Federighi after planned updates to the voice assistant were delayed, a notable setback for Apple.
After changing positions, Walker has been working on a new AI-powered search engine to compete with Perplexity and ChatGPT, with a launch planned for next year.
Walker is now the senior director of the Answers, Knowledge, and Information team. His responsibilities and reporting have been significantly reduced in recent months, but he remains an influential figure in shaping Apple's AI strategy.
His departure from Apple comes amid a series of layoffs in this area: the company's chief artificial intelligence researcher in robotics, Jiang Zhang, and the head of the Apple Foundation Models team, Ruomin Pan, have both left the company. Both specialists have joined Meta.
At an internal meeting in March this year, Walker acknowledged that the delays in updating Siri were frustrating, but emphasized the significant amount of work that had been done.