Apple has decided to shut down its office in San Diego, which includes a team of 121 people working in the field of artificial intelligence. This puts many employees at risk of losing their jobs, according to Bloomberg agency.
The company informed the group known as Data Operations Annotations that they need to relocate to Austin to merge with the Texas team.
Apple has granted employees the opportunity to decide whether they want to transfer or not until the end of February. If they do not, the company will proceed to terminate their contracts on April 26th.
The group is responsible for enhancing Siri’s performance by listening to the inquiries received by the voice assistant and determining whether it has heard the questions accurately and dealt with them precisely.
Apple’s Chief Operations Officer, Christine DeFillipo, announced this move, stating that the company has offices in China, India, Ireland, and Spain.
A spokesperson for Apple confirmed the decision, stating that the company is consolidating its Data Operations Annotations teams in the United States at its headquarters in Austin. They added that the company is currently providing all employees with the opportunity to continue their roles with Apple in Austin.
The company also stated that it is strongly committed to San Diego and is continuing to hire as it expands its engineering teams.
Apple gathers all the impacted team’s employees from other countries into one office.
The employees in San Diego were surprised by this move. The artificial intelligence team in San Diego was working within an office rented by Apple.
Apple had recently informed its employees that it plans to relocate them to a new headquarters in the area by the end of January.
Earlier this month, the company distributed packing boxes to the employees in preparation for their move within the city.
A significant number of affected employees indicated that they are not willing to move to Austin. Apple informed the employees that they can apply for other positions, although some of them do not believe they are qualified for many roles because they lack engineering backgrounds.
San Diego employees are focused on utilizing Siri in multiple languages including Hebrew, English, various dialects of Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and French. This move may potentially result in the departure of dozens of employees from the company.
The team has a distinguished history within the company, and the group consisted of contractors who listened to Siri queries years ago to verify their accuracy.
This practice has raised concerns regarding privacy, prompting Apple to dispense with contractors and replace them with full-time employees.
A small number of employees in the group started assisting Apple in transitioning to artificial intelligence products based on large linguistic models.
