People inside Apple, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not yet been announced, said they were told on Wednesday that the group, called Data Operations Annotations, would be relocated to Austin and merged with the same team in Texas. Apple told employees they have until the end of February to decide whether to relocate. If not relocated, employees will be laid off on April 26.
The group, which also has offices in China, India, Ireland and Spain, is responsible for improving Siri by listening to voice service queries and determining whether it accurately heard and handled the question. The news of closing the San Diego group was announced by Christine DeFilippo, a senior deputy to John Giannandrea, Apple's head of artificial intelligence, the person mentioned above said.
An Apple spokeswoman confirmed the move, saying the company is concentrating "the U.S.-based data operations annotation team to our campus in Austin, where the majority of the team is already working." "Everyone currently employed will have the opportunity to continue working at Apple in Austin," she added.
The company also said it is "strongly committed to San Diego" because it has "significant growth" there, and it continues to hire as Apple expands its engineering team. In other countries where affected teams are located, Apple has centralized all employees in one office.
For San Diego employees, the move came as a surprise. According to people familiar with the matter, the artificial intelligence team has been working out of offices rented by Apple. But the company recently told employees they would move to a new Apple campus in the area by the end of January. Earlier this month, Apple distributed packing boxes to employees in preparation for the move in the city.
And now, they have to move to Texas. Most of the affected employees have expressed reluctance to move to Austin, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Apple told employees they could apply for other jobs, but some believed they were ineligible for many of the jobs because they didn't have an engineering background, these people said.
Employees in San Diego work on Siri in Hebrew, English, various Spanish dialects, Portuguese, Arabic and French.
The move is likely to result in dozens of employee departures. Apple, which had 161,000 employees as of September, has largely avoided layoffs since the COVID-19 pandemic began, in stark contrast to most of its tech peers. Still, it cut some corporate retail jobs and hiring staff last April.
Apple said employees willing to relocate to Austin by the end of June will be able to keep their jobs. The company will provide a relocation allowance of $7,000. Employees who choose to leave Apple will have their positions eliminated and receive four weeks of severance pay, plus an additional week of severance pay for each year of service, as well as six months of health insurance.
The team has a distinguished history within Apple. Years ago, the team consisted mostly of contractors who listened to Siri's queries to ensure their accuracy. The practice raised privacy concerns and was made optional for customers in 2019. The contractor was eventually laid off and replaced with full-time employees.
A small group of employees in this group have already begun assisting Apple in its transition to artificial intelligence products based on large language models (LLM). Now, these employees are reviewing queries that Siri may receive and choosing from a handful of answers. They must then explain their decision. According to Bloomberg News, Apple plans to announce its LLM plan in June.