Samsung hires former Apple executive to lead its new AI division
Samsung has reportedly pulled off a major coup by hiring a former Apple executive to head its newly formed artificial intelligence (AI) division. According to a report, the South Korea-based tech giant internally announced the appointment of Murat Akbacak, who led the division responsible for developing conversational and contextual AI for Siri. He will now head Samsung’s North American AI Center, which has reportedly been formed by merging two different AI centers operating on the continent. Notably, Apple also announced several AI-powered capabilities for Siri at WWDC 2024 on Monday.
Samsung reportedly hiring former Apple executive
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman cited anonymous people familiar with the matter in a report and claimed that Samsung this week announced the internal hiring of Murat Akbacak. At the time of writing, Akbacak’s LinkedIn profile still lists his current role as Apple’s Head of Conversational and Contextual AI at Siri. Interestingly, if the report’s timeline is to be believed, the former Siri chief joined the rival around the same time that Apple was holding its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024, where Siri’s AI capabilities became a major topic of conversation.
Akbacak will reportedly lead Samsung’s newly established North America AI Center. The tech giant recently merged two separate AI centers, located in Toronto and Mountain View, California, into a single North American division. According to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg, the centralized research department was created to improve operations and increase efficiency.
The same memo reportedly stated that at Apple, Akbacak was “responsible for defining and executing the strategy for Siri, Apple’s personal digital assistant, with a focus on personalization, contextualization, and advancements in conversational and multimodal AI.” The Apple executive joined the iPhone maker in January 2015 and has worked for the company for nearly a decade. Notably, the announcement has yet to be made public.
At WWDC 2024, Apple made several announcements around AI. Siri can now understand natural language and contextual cues in user commands and perform complex tasks. The virtual assistant is also being deeply integrated with several native apps.
The tech giant also showcased its own Apple Intelligence, which consists of an on-device AI model and a cloud-based AI model powered by the company’s Private Cloud Compute.
