Apple Inc executive Kim Vorrath, a company veteran known for fixing troubled products and bringing major projects to market, has a new job: whipping artificial intelligence and Siri into shape.
Vorrath, a vice president in charge of program management, was moved to Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division this week, according to people with knowledge of the matter. She will be a top deputy to AI chief John Giannandrea, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the change has not been announced publicly.
The move helps bolster a team that is racing to make Apple a leader in AI — an area where it has fallen behind technology peers. The company has struggled to match the capabilities of OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google. And its Apple Intelligence platform has suffered from a slow and bumpy rollout.
Photo: AFP
The Siri digital assistant, groundbreaking when it was unveiled in 2011, has come to symbolize Apple’s shortcomings in AI. Upstarts like OpenAI have created their own, more versatile chatbots, and smartphone rival Samsung Electronics Co has been faster to weave artificial intelligence features into its software. Amazon.com Inc is also adapting its Alexa platform for the AI world.
Vorrath, who has spent 36 years at Apple, is known for managing the development of tough software projects. She joins the new team from Apple’s hardware engineering division, where she helped launch the Vision Pro headset.
A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment on the move.
Over the years, Vorrath has had a hand in several of Apple’s biggest endeavors. In the mid-2000s, she was chosen to lead project management for the original iPhone software group and get the iconic device ready for consumers. Until 2019, she oversaw project management for the iPhone, iPad and Mac operating systems, before taking on the Vision Pro software. Haley Allen is to replace Vorrath overseeing program management for visionOS, the headset’s operating system, according to the people.
Prior to joining Giannandrea’s organization, Vorrath had spent several weeks advising Kelsey Peterson, the group’s previous head of program management. Peterson will now report to Vorrath — as will two other AI executives, Cindy Lin and Marc Schonbrun. Giannandrea, who joined Apple from Google in 2018, disclosed the changes in a memo sent to staffers.
The move signals that AI is now more important than the Vision Pro, which launched in February last year, and is seen as the biggest challenge within the company, according to a longtime Apple executive who asked not to be identified. Vorrath has a knack for organizing engineering groups and creating an effective workflow with new processes, the executive said.
It has been clear for some time now that Giannandrea needs additional help managing an AI group with growing prominence, according to the executive. Vorrath is poised to bring Apple’s product development culture to the AI work, the person said.
This year, the artificial intelligence group is focused on revamping the underlying infrastructure of Siri and improving the company’s in-house AI models, Giannandrea said in the memo.
The company debuted its Apple Intelligence platform in October, but the initial version only included basic features like text-message and notification summarization.
Apple has promised to overhaul Siri as part of the AI rollout, but that element is not ready yet. The company aims to release a new version of the digital assistant as part of iOS 18.4 in April, Bloomberg has reported. The new version is designed to better respond to queries by tapping into the customer’s data. It can also identify what is currently on a user’s screen and more precisely control applications through a system called App Intents.
The current version of Siri has drawn criticism for not understanding requests and failing to execute simple commands. And even when the promised features do launch, they would not match the capabilities unveiled by Samsung, which uses a mix of its own technology and the Google Gemini platform.
Apple is working on an even more advanced version of Siri that includes a more conversational interface — something more in line with ChatGPT and other AI offerings. It would not be ready until at least next year, though Apple might give a preview of the software this year, Bloomberg has reported.
WEAKER ACTIVITY: The sharpest deterioration was seen in the electronics and optical components sector, with the production index falling 13.2 points to 44.5 Taiwan’s manufacturing sector last month contracted for a second consecutive month, with the purchasing managers’ index (PMI) slipping to 48, reflecting ongoing caution over trade uncertainties, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The decline reflects growing caution among companies amid uncertainty surrounding US tariffs, semiconductor duties and automotive import levies, and it is also likely linked to fading front-loading activity, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “Some clients have started shifting orders to Southeast Asian countries where tariff regimes are already clear,” Lien told a news conference. Firms across the supply chain are also lowering stock levels to mitigate
Six Taiwanese companies, including contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), made the 2025 Fortune Global 500 list of the world’s largest firms by revenue. In a report published by New York-based Fortune magazine on Tuesday, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), ranked highest among Taiwanese firms, placing 28th with revenue of US$213.69 billion. Up 60 spots from last year, TSMC rose to No. 126 with US$90.16 billion in revenue, followed by Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) at 348th, Pegatron Corp (和碩) at 461st, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) at 494th and Wistron Corp (緯創) at
NEGOTIATIONS: Semiconductors play an outsized role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development and are a major driver of the Taiwan-US trade imbalance With US President Donald Trump threatening to impose tariffs on semiconductors, Taiwan is expected to face a significant challenge, as information and communications technology (ICT) products account for more than 70 percent of its exports to the US, Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said on Friday. Compared with other countries, semiconductors play a disproportionately large role in Taiwan’s industrial and economic development, Lien said. As the sixth-largest contributor to the US trade deficit, Taiwan recorded a US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US last year — up from US$47.8 billion in 2023 — driven by strong
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing service provider, yesterday said it would boost equipment capital expenditure by up to 16 percent for this year to cope with strong customer demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Aside from AI, a growing demand for semiconductors used in the automotive and industrial sectors is to drive ASE’s capacity next year, the Kaohsiung-based company said. “We do see the disparity between AI and other general sectors, and that pretty much aligns the scenario in the first half of this year,” ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told an
RSS