Apple is at the rear of on artificial intelligence.
Now, the business is getting ready to unleash its very first wave of user-dealing with AI products and solutions. And guiding that force is John Giannandrea, a Silicon Valley veteran who is Apple’s top rated government in demand of AI tactic.
On Monday, Apple will maintain its once-a-year developers convention, called WWDC, where it really is predicted to present consumers and investors its choose on generative AI throughout products these as the Apple iphone, iPad and Mac, the fruit of Giannandrea’s get the job done.
There’s huge force on Apple to provide an remarkable slate of AI goods and companies. In interviews with CNBC, a number of people today who know and have worked with Giannandrea more than the yrs depict him as a humble and forward-of-the-curve technologist, a good quality that could be important to Apple catching up in AI.
Apple’s electronic assistant Siri is a mess and struggles with even the most primary concerns. Apple doesn’t sell a product like the AI chatbots getting pushed out by Microsoft or startups OpenAI and Anthropic. It would not offer impressive chips to cloud providers functioning AI solutions like Nvidia. Apple stock has lagged when shares of its peers have ballooned this calendar year on the guarantee of AI. The stock is up just 1% this yr, whilst Nvidia, which overtook Apple in market value Wednesday, is up 144%. Apple also dropped its location as the most useful community enterprise in the globe to a further AI leader, Microsoft, in January.
Apple declined to remark.
Wall Road sees this as a second for Apple to establish it is not driving on AI, serving as a catalyst for the stock by the 2nd 50 percent of the yr and spurring a warm enhance cycle for the future Iphone product.
“We feel that AI functions, mixed with other Apple ecosystem investments and hardware upgrades for Apple iphone 16, has the probable to push upside to item estimates by increasing update prices,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a be aware to investors this 7 days.
Now it’s up to Giannandrea and his group to match these anticipations.
As the tech earth turned significantly obsessed with AI around the previous 18 months or so, Apple commenced to talk more openly about how AI powers solution capabilities and growth.
“We see AI and [machine learning] as essential, core systems, and they are virtually embedded in just about every product that we build,” Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner informed CNBC in August 2023.
Until finally now, Giannandrea’s staff has labored on AI attributes that run driving the scenes on Apple units and application. That involves points these as an accessibility aspect that can digitally mimic someone’s voice if they lose the means to discuss themselves, and computerized edits that make your Iphone shots seem superior.
If you request the folks at Apple, the corporation has been using AI for several decades to electric power what you do on your Apple gadgets with no you even understanding about it. Which is envisioned to evolve into more user-struggling with features this 12 months, this kind of as enhancements to Siri, a partnership with OpenAI that’ll insert the ChatGPT-maker’s tech to the iPhone’s software package, and innovative voice controls for its apps, according to a Bloomberg report very last 7 days.
Folks who have worked with Giannandrea around the decades who spoke to CNBC characterize him as a humble, mild-mannered technologist who doesn’t request notice like much more flashy Silicon Valley executives usually do.
His most notable begin was at a company named Standard Magic, which spun out of Apple and commenced organization in the early 1990s making software program for PDAs, the predecessors to present day fashionable smartphones. Late in that decade he cofounded TellMe, a startup that built a voice-activated, on-line information assistance.
A TellMe cofounder, Anthony Accardi, reported Giannandrea usually seemed ahead of his time, functioning on technologies such as managing computer software in the cloud numerous a long time in advance of it grew to become the common.
“He has the foresight to identify this is an inevitability and direction we’re heading in the future,” Accardi stated.
Giannandrea, identified by most as “JG,” joined Google just after the look for big acquired a different startup he cofounded named Metaweb.
Geoffrey Hinton, recognized as a person of the “godfathers” of AI, worked with Giannandrea at Google. Hinton claimed Giannandrea experienced a uncommon skill established among the tech executives as both equally a fantastic researcher and manager. Hinton pointed to a generative AI breakthrough Google created final ten years: the skill to routinely caption images using AI.
“He actually comprehended the value of it,” Hinton mentioned.
By 2018, Giannandrea oversaw AI at Google, and it was witnessed as a huge coup when Apple poached him that yr. Inside eight months, he was promoted to Apple’s leadership staff, reporting specifically to Prepare dinner together with other top rated executives this sort of as Main Operating Officer Jeff Williams and expert services boss Eddy Cue. It was the most significant indication yet that Apple was getting AI significantly, specially for future assignments like its now-defunct self-driving car task.
So why depart Google, the perceived leader in AI at the time, for Apple? He failed to like how leadership at Google experienced problems earning decisions and executing them, as an alternative managing elements of the small business like a skunkworks research lab, according to one person who spoke with Giannandrea recently. He identified the reverse at Apple: leadership would make a decision, and then the rest of the firm will get guiding it to make it come about.
But in the 6 many years given that signing up for Apple, Giannandrea has not been in the public check out like his peers on Apple’s management crew generally are, exhibiting off the firm’s newest solutions and updates in flashy marketing videos littered with slick edits and dad jokes. But his several yrs of encounter and know-how have acquired him wide regard between other Silicon Valley leaders.
“I however go to him for wisdom,” stated Emil Michael, a previous leading govt at Uber who also cofounded TellMe with Giannandrea.
Exterior of Apple, Giannandrea sits on the board of SETI, the nonprofit corporation started in 1984 to detect radio alerts from opportunity smart lifestyle across the cosmos. He also ran a facts centre business with his wife in modern several years, which he ultimately offered, including to his list of prosperous exits at tech businesses he cofounded.
At SETI, Giannandrea is an energetic and engaged board member, and even gave some of his have income to assist fund a new challenge referred to as COSMIC that utilizes highly effective desktops to evaluate radio alerts from outer room, SETI CEO Monthly bill Diamond advised CNBC. Giannandrea also sat on a SETI evaluation committee to give suggestions on exploration options for planetary defenses against asteroids, according to Diamond.
“He’s got a really scientific brain, an engineering thoughts,” Diamond explained. “The problem about lifetime outside of Earth fascinates him.”
Some who know Giannandrea instructed CNBC they’d be amazed if he built an physical appearance for the duration of Apple’s WWDC keynote Monday, as a substitute of delegating the highlight to users of his crew or Craig Federighi, Apple’s head of software package.
“JG is not a showman,” just one human being who is aware him well told CNBC. “That’s not his vibe.”
