Samsung Hires Former Apple Siri Exec To Lead Its AI Center In The US: What Will Be His Role?

Samsung is reportedly merging its two North American research centers that are focused on working on Artificial Intelligence technology. To lead the new AI team, the tech giant has hired former Apple executive.

This move by Samsung could be seen as an attempt to compete with rival AI companies like ChatGPT, Google and also Apple, which is planning to enter the AI race soon.

As per the report, the company has already made the announcement internally this week. However, an official statement regarding the same from Samsung is still awaited.

Samsung is reportedly merging its teams in Toronto and Mountain View, California, to form a new operation called the North America AI Center to improve operations and increase efficiency.

The former Apple executive who will be heading the new team in the North America AI Center is Murat Akbacak, the report said. At Apple, he was responsible for defining and executing the strategy for the iPhone maker’s personal digital assistant Siri, where he was focused on personalizing, contextualizing and advancing “conversational and multimodal AI,” as per an internal company document.

However, his LinkedIn profile still reads he is the Head of Contextual and Conversational AI at Siri-Apple. Akbacak has also worked in tech giants like Microsoft and IBM.

Samsung introduced the Galaxy AI earlier this year along with its Galaxy S24 line-up which aims to enhance the efficiency of the smartphones. Some of the Galaxy AI features include Circle to Search, Note Assist, Interpreter, Live Translate, Chat Assist, Transcript Assist, Generative Edit, Browsing Assist, Edit Suggestions and more.

These features were initially rolled out on the flagship devices of Samsung like the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23 Plus, Galaxy S23 Ultra, Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy Z Fold5, Galaxy Z Flip5 and the Galaxy Tab S9 series.

Samsung’s tech rival Apple, on the other hand recently in its WWDC event introduced ‘Apple Intelligence’, which is the company’s first personal intelligence system built for the iPhone, iMac and iPads. As per The Verge, Apple said its AI features will carry out actions between apps, as well as manage notifications, automatically write things for you, and summarize text in mail and other apps.