Apple restructures San Diego Siri team with compensation offers

As Apple undergoes significant changes in its AI development, particularly with Siri, the San Diego-based team is facing restructuring.

Bloomberg reports that Apple will combine a San Diego team of 121 employees with one in Austin, Texas. The employees who relocate will receive $7,000 stipends, while others will be offered severance packages, including four weeks' pay plus an additional week per year worked, along with six months of health insurance.

The San Diego team is responsible for listening to Siri recordings in various languages, including Hebrew, English, Spanish, and Arabic. Despite using people to quality-check Siri recordings, Apple has been perceived as lagging behind competitors like Google and Meta in AI development.

To bridge this gap, Apple has been investing heavily, courting news outlets for training data, releasing frameworks supporting AI development, and optimizing large language models (LLMs) for use on iPhones. The company is expected to announce its LLM plans in June.