Ke Yang, an Apple executive leading AI-driven web search initiatives, has departed the company to join Meta. According to a Bloomberg report, this move is the latest in a series of exits from Apple’s AI unit, jeopardizing a planned Siri revamp.
The departure follows that of Ruoming Pang, Apple’s former head of AI models, who also moved to Meta earlier this year. Roughly a dozen members from Apple’s AI and machine learning (AIML) team have also left the company, with several of them joining Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs. The Bloomberg report added that Apple’s remaining AI team members anticipate more colleagues will leave in the coming months.
Only a few weeks ago, Yang had started to oversee the Answers, Knowledge, and Information (AKI) team. This group is tasked with improving Siri’s capabilities by allowing it to retrieve information from the web, positioning Apple to better compete with rivals such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google. The highly-anticipated Siri update, scheduled for March, is also expected to enable the assistant to tap into personal data to handle more complex tasks.
