It was only a matter of time until somebody created an artificial intelligence designed to transmute you into an anime character. And now a team of South Korean researchers from video game company NCSoft has done just that. By carrying out advanced experiments on neuronal cultures and large scale simulations, a group of scientists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel claims to have created a new type of ultra-fast artificial intelligence algorithm. Bill Stasior, the former head of Apple's Siri division, is leaving the company after nearly a decade to join Microsoft's artificial intelligence division, reports The Information. Although Stasior left Apple in May, he's only joining Microsoft later this month as a corporate vice president, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott.

Microsoft has hired Bill Stasior, the person who until recently was in charge of the Siri virtual assistant at Apple. In 2016 Microsoft established the Artificial Intelligence and Research engineering group in a reorganization. Months later the company added AI to its list of top priorities in its annual report. Last year Microsoft went further in another reorganization that placed some AI teams in the group working on Microsoft's Azure public cloud. Since then Microsoft has made AI acquisitions that have brought in additional talent, including Bonsai, Lobe and Semantic Machines.

Bill Stasior, the former head of Apple's Siri division, is leaving the company after nearly a decade to join Microsoft's artificial intelligence division, reports The Information. Although Stasior left Apple in May, he's only joining Microsoft later this month as a corporate vice president, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott. Stassior worked at Apple for more than seven years, joining back in 2012. Stasior's departure seems less an indictment of the current state of Siri and more a reflection of the reality of AI at Apple. Last year, the iPhone maker poached John Giannandrea from Google, where he was a former head of search and AI. At the time of Giannandrea's hiring, the move was considered an admission from Apple that its current AI efforts were lackluster and needing revamping, evidenced by Siri falling far behind Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa in sophistication and industry adoption.

Bill Stasior, the longtime former Apple executive overseeing its Siri digital assistant, has joined Microsoft, continuing a reshuffling of artificial intelligence leadership at big tech companies. Starting this month, Stasior, whose move to Microsoft hasn't been previously reported, will become a corporate vice president of technology, reporting to Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott. Stasior referred questions about his new job to a Microsoft spokesperson, who confirmed Stasior's hiring, adding that "he will work to help align technology strategies across the company." At Microsoft, Stasior will lead an artificial intelligence group, a person familiar with the matter said. The shift underscores the intense demand for AI leadership inside the largest tech companies, all of which are jockeying for position against each other.

The man who has headed up Siri at Apple since 2012 is no longer at the helm, according to The Information. Bill Stasior remains at the company in a different role, the report states. We've reached out to Apple for comment. Stasior joined Apple to take over Siri in 2012 after being poached from Amazon's A9 retail search team. At this in time, most of the original Siri co-founders had already left Apple and Stasior was tasked with taking on the mantle of deciding where the digital assistant should move next.

While Apple recently introduced the HomePod and iOS 11, former employees who worked on Siri told the Wall Street Journal the virtual assistant is lagging behind its competitors because of company concerns about user privacy. Siri, which competes with Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices, is struggling to rise above the competition because of Apple's culture, which prioritizes user privacy, making it hard to personalize and improve the product, former Siri team employees said. Read: Amazon Sees Apple's Siri Talking With Alexa Virtual Assistant, Report Says Amazon and Google assistants had an advantage over Siri because they had more data from their search engines they could use to train their virtual assistants and have less-restrictive privacy policies than Apple, the former employees said. The Journal report said Apple protects user privacy by randomly tagging Siri searches and keeping the information tagged for a timeframe of six months, unlike its competitors Amazon and Google, which retain the data until ask for it to be discarded. That issue has delayed efforts to boost Siri because Apple "relinquished control of data before it could be used to gauge the impact of software tweaks," employees told the Journal.