In a new report claims that Apple Inc. executive Kim Vorrath, a company veteran known for fixing troubled products and bringing major projects to market, has a new job: whipping artificial intelligence and Siri into shape, according to a new Bloomberg report.

More specifically, Bloomberg reports that Vorrath, a vice president in charge of program management, was moved to Apple’s artificial intelligence and machine learning division this week, according to people with knowledge of the matter. She’ll be a top deputy to AI chief John Giannandrea.

The move helps bolster a team that’s racing to make Apple a leader in AI — an area where it’s fallen behind technology peers. The company has struggled to match the capabilities of OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. And its Apple Intelligence platform has suffered from a slow and bumpy rollout.

The Siri digital assistant, groundbreaking when it was unveiled in 2011, has come to symbolize Apple’s shortcomings in AI. Upstarts like OpenAI have created their own, more versatile chatbots, and smartphone rival Samsung Electronics Co. has been faster to weave artificial intelligence features into its software. Amazon.com Inc. also is adapting its Alexa platform for the AI world.

Vorrath, who has spent 36 years at Apple, is known for managing the development of tough software projects. She’s also put procedures in place that can catch and fix bugs. Vorrath joins the new team from Apple’s hardware engineering division, where she helped launch the Vision Pro headset.

The move signals that AI is now more important than the Vision Pro, which launched in February 2024, and is seen as the biggest challenge within the company, according to a longtime Apple executive who asked not to be identified.

Apple has promised to overhaul Siri as part of the AI rollout, but that element isn’t ready yet. The company aims to release a new version of the digital assistant as part of iOS 18.4 in April, Bloomberg has reported.

The current version of Siri has drawn criticism for not understanding requests and failing to execute simple commands. And even when the promised features do launch, they won’t match the capabilities unveiled by Samsung, which uses a mix of its own technology and the Google Gemini platform.

Apple is working on an even more advanced version of Siri that includes a more conversational interface — something more in line with ChatGPT and other AI offerings. It won’t be ready until at least 2026, though Apple may give a preview of the software this year, Bloomberg has reported.

In recent months, current and former executives have expressed concerns about AI chief John Giannandrea's  ability to turn Apple into a force in AI. Vorrath has a chance to impose more discipline on the effort as she did with Apple's Vision Pro project. For more, read the full Bloomberg report.

Tim Cook spoke about AI extensively with Wired back in December 2024. Cook contended that Apple had been preparing for the AI revolution all along. As far back as 2018, he poached Google’s top AI manager, John Giannandrea, for a rare expansion of the company’s senior vice president ranks." And yet Microsoft's Copilot makes Siri look like a retarded Armadillo. Having to wait until late 2026 to get a Copilot equal really illustrates how Apple got caught completely flatfooted in one of the most important trends in decades.