Apple To Dissolve Its 121-Person AI Team; Employees Must Relocate or Face Termination

Apple is dissolving its 121-person artificial intelligence-related operations team in San Diego, leaving many employees vulnerable to being fired, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported.

The team, known as ‘Data Operations Annotations,’ is being relocated to Austin, where it will be merged with the Texas branch. The team is responsible for working on Siri and its voice service queries.

Initially, this team handled Siri queries, but this became optional for customers in 2019, leading to the team being replaced by full-time employees. The team’s expertise includes being competent in multiple languages—including Hebrew, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and French.

Bloomberg also reports that the announcement was made by a top deputy to John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of AI. An Apple spokesperson said: “Data Operations Annotations teams in the US will be together at our campus in Austin, where a majority of the team is already based.” She indicated that all impacted employees would have the option of continuing in their present positions at Apple Austin. They would, however, be required to decide whether they wanted to relocate from San Diego by the end of February or face termination.

Sources report that this move caught many Apple employees in the team by surprise, and many have expressed disappointment at the prospect of relocating to Austin. However, Apple is offering these employees a $7,000 relocation compensation if they choose to relocate to Austin by June. If they fail to relocate, they will be terminated from their position at Apple and will receive severance pay based on their tenure with the company, as well as a few additional months of health insurance coverage.

With that said, this news comes at a time when many companies have fired hundreds of employees, including Google and Amazon. Apple, on the other hand, is doing its best to avoid layoffs by offering employees alternatives to being directly terminated.