Apple has selected former Google executive John Giannandrea to lead a new artificial intelligence and machine learning team, the company confirmed on Tuesday.
Giannandrea joined Apple in April 2018, fresh off an 8-year stint at Google, where he served as head of the Machine Intelligence, Research and Search teams, TechCrunch first reported.
The hire was perceived as a victory for Apple, which many view as lagging behind rivals such as Google and Amazon in artificial intelligence. At the time, Apple said Giannandrea would run the company's "machine learning and A.I. strategy," The New York Times reported.
Apple's new team will unite its core machine learning and Siri units under Giannandrea's lead. Those units will continue to work as they always have across several areas of the company, but will now report to Giannandrea, TechCrunch reported. Giannandrea will report directly to Apple CEO Tim Cook.