Original Siri Engineer Leaves Apple for General Electric

According to a report from The Information, Darren Haas, who is one of the last remaining members of the original team that developed Siri, has left Apple to work at General Electric.

Haas worked on Siri before it was purchased by Apple in 2010. Haas’s departure follows the departure of Steve D’Aurora, his fellow Siri alumni. The two are believed to be working on a similar cloud platform at their new employer.

There’s no official confirmation yet, as both employees still list themselves as Apple employees on LinkedIn.

Earlier this week, other members of the original Siri team, including co-founders Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, unveiled a next-generation AI bot able to carry out complex tasks by mimicking the “spontaneity and knowledge base” of a human assistant. The new AI assistant is called Viv and was demonstrated at TechCrunch Disrupt.

The first live demo of Viv showed that it is far more advanced than Siri with improved contextual awareness. The AI bot also has the ability to cleverly craft in-depth responses to complicated questions on the fly.