Apple poaches Google's AI chief in push to save Siri

Apple has poached Google's AI chief, John Giannandrea, to run its machine learning and AI operations, in the clearest sign yet that the iPhone creator is attempting to fix the problems that saw its early lead in the field crumble. Scottish-born Giannandrea, who joined Google in 2010 after his startup, Metaweb, was acquired, has led the search firm's push to become market leader in AI and machine learning. Under his command, Google Brain, the company's main AI research team, has rebuilt the technology that underpins some of Google's landmark products, including search, translation and voice recognition. He also led Google into its position today, where it battles with Amazon for technological supremacy in the field of voice controlled assistants. That role was once held by Apple, whose Siri technology introduced the feature to many, but which failed to capitalise on the lead.