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After mocking Apple’s AI features, Samsung has hired an Apple Siri veteran to lead its AI development. The Korean firm has reportedly roped in Murat Akbacak, the former head of Siri’s contextual and conversational AI. Akbacak will lead Samsung’s newly formed AI research center. The North America AI Center is a centralized group combining its existing AI teams in Toronto and Mountain View, California.
Samsung hires Apple Siri head to lead its AI development
Apple announced a plethora of AI features at WWDC 2024, and Samsung rushed to mock it for arriving lack to the AI party. However, deep down, the Korean tech biggie knows that the AI battle is getting real and it must amp up its Galaxy AI game to stay on top. With Apple Intelligence, Siri has become more personalized. It can understand the context of requests and assist iPhone users in various everyday tasks.
Samsung‘s Bixby, on the other hand, is hardly relevant today. The digital assistant doesn’t benefit much from Galaxy AI. It is unclear if Bixby still has a future in the AI era, though the latest development suggests the company has plans to rejuvenate it. Citing an internal memo Bloomberg reports that Samsung has combined two of its AI research teams in North America “to improve operations and increase efficiency.”
The memo didn’t specify if the teams would be housed in a single location or if they would continue working from the existing sites in Toronto and Mountain View. However, it revealed that Murat Akbacak will be leading the combined unit. At Apple, Akbacak was “responsible for defining and executing the strategy for Siri… focusing on personalization, contextualization, and advancements in conversational and multimodal AI,” according to the memo.
Before joining Apple in 2015, Akbacak was a senior scientist and AI researcher at Microsoft. He worked on the Windows maker’s voice assistant services for over two years. Samsung would be hoping to benefit from his vast experience in the field of digital assistant and AI. We’ll have to wait and see whether Akbacak can revive Bixby. Perhaps time will tell if Samsung hired him to work on Bixby or Galaxy AI in general.
Samsung will unveil new AI features next month
Samsung launched Galaxy AI with the Galaxy S24 series in January and gradually expanded it to older models. The company is now gearing up to add more features to the suite, including an AI tool that can create images from rough sketches and text prompts. The new features will debut with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6 next month. The foldable duo may go official on July 10 alongside the Galaxy Ring, new watches, and earbuds.