Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta

Apple's artificial intelligence division has lost another senior executive, with Ke Yang, who was recently appointed to lead the company's AI-driven web search effort, departing for Meta, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Yang had only recently taken over Apple's newly created Answers, Knowledge, and Information group, known internally as 'AKI.' The team is responsible for developing technology to make Siri more ChatGPT-like, including the ability to retrieve live information from the web. The AKI project is said to be a central component of Apple's planned ‌Siri‌ overhaul, which is currently scheduled for release in March 2026. The update is said to include features that were delayed from earlier this year, such as allowing ‌Siri‌ to access personal data and handle more complex, multi-step requests.

Yang's promotion to head of AKI came just weeks ago following the departure of Robby Walker, another longtime Apple executive who had been leading the group. Yang had previously overseen the search-focused portion of AKI before being elevated to lead the division in full, reporting directly to John Giannandrea, Apple's senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy. With Yang's exit, the AKI team will now report to Benoit Dupin, one of Giannandrea's deputies responsible for Apple's machine learning infrastructure.

The AKI project has reportedly become a major element of Apple's efforts to close the gap with rivals such as OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google Gemini, all of which have made rapid advances in AI-powered search and conversational interfaces. Gurman describes the Answers feature as a new layer of ‌Siri‌ designed to synthesize responses from live internet data, allowing it to deliver up-to-date answers and contextual information.

Yang's departure is the latest in a growing series of exits from Apple's artificial intelligence division, which has reportedly seen more than a dozen senior researchers and engineers leave this year alone. Many of those departures were from the company's Foundation Models team, which is tasked with developing Apple's core generative AI models. That unit was led by Ruoming Pang, who also left for Meta earlier this year to help establish a new research division known as Superintelligence Labs.

Tags: Apple Intelligence, Bloomberg, Mark GurmanThis article, "Head of Apple's AI Search Project Leaves to Join Meta" first appeared on MacRumors.comDiscuss this article in our forums