Tom Gruber, the leader of Siri’s Advanced Development group and one of the voice-activated assistant’s original co-founders and creators, has retired from Apple, according to a report stemming from The Information.
The Information corroborated its initial report with a statement from an Apple spokesperson who said, “personal interests in photography and ocean conservation” is what Gruber will be pursuing in the future following his departure from the company.
Gruber developed Siri along with Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, with the voice-activated assistant first showing up in the iOS App Store as an individual app back in 2010. Apple then acquired the app two months later and eventually integrated it into its iOS operating system, with all of the platform’s co-founders joining the company.
Kittlaus parted ways with Apple in 2011 and Cheyer left the company in 2012, though the pair worked together on a new project called Viv just a few years later. Viv was acquired by Samsung in 2016 and the platform’s technology was used to improve the South Korean manufacturer’s AI assistant, Bixby.
With Gruber’s departure from Apple, all of Siri’s co-founders have now left the company.
While Siri was once the most capable voice-activated assistant out there, Google Assistant and Alexa have since surpassed Apple’s platform by a significant margin in terms of functionality.
With the release of iOS 12, Apple is bringing a new IFTTT-like feature called Siri Shortcuts to its voice activated assistant.
Source: The Information
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