Samsung reportedly hiring ex-Apple Siri lead to head its new AI division

While Samsung introduced several new AI-powered features with the Galaxy S24 earlier this year, its AI-powered digital voice assistant, Bixby, hasn’t received much attention.

A new report claims that Samsung is hiring an ex-Apple employee in charge of Siri’s contextual and conversational awareness to lead a new AI team.

Ex-Apple Siri lead to reportedly lead Samsung’s newly-formed AI team

Over the past few years, it seems Bixby has fallen even further behind its rivals Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri. However, Samsung may have plans to rejuvenate Bixby and its other AI efforts by hiring an ex-Apple employee. According to a report from the usually reliable Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Samsung has hired Murat Akbacak to lead its newly formed unit, the North America AI Center.

Murat Akbacak’s LinkedIn profile says he is still employed at Apple and is the Head of Conversational & Contextual AI at Siri. However, if Bloomberg’s report is accurate, Akbacak could be serving his notice period at Apple. Apparently, Samsung made the announcement internally this week, while Apple was busy announcing Apple Intelligence and all its new AI features for iPadOS 18, iOS 18, and macOS Sequoia.

Samsung is said to be combining its teams in Toronto and Mountain View, California. According to an internal memo, Samsung combined these two teams to improve operations and increase efficiency.

Since AI is a hot new trend, companies like Apple and Samsung are aggressively introducing new AI features and services in their products.

At Apple, Akbacak was responsible for “defining and executing the strategy for Siri, Apple’s personal digital assistant, focusing on personalization, contextualization, and advancements in conversational and multimodal AI.” He could bring that vast experience to improve Bixby and Galaxy AI on Samsung’s Galaxy ecosystem of devices.

Watch our video below to learn more about Galaxy AI.

Samsung’s new lead is an AI researcher who worked on voice assistants when he worked for Microsoft ten years ago. Hopefully, he can boost Samsung’s AI efforts across its ecosystem of devices and services. Using AI effectively can make or break the next decade for the South Korean firm.

Image Credits: Samsung