Apple Inc. is revamping its artificial intelligence teams into a single unit headed up by former Google LLC exec John Giannandrea.

Giannandrea (pictured), who was formerly Google’s head of search and AI, will lead Apple’s machine learning division, its Siri team and the team working on Core ML, which is an application programming interface designed to help third-party AI apps run on the company’s iOS mobile platform.

The executive departed Google in April after nearly eight years at the company, joining Apple the very next day.

Giannandrea’s title doesn’t change. He remains the company’s chief of machine learning and AI strategy, as reflected on Apple’s executive leadership page. TechCrunch, which broke the news, said Apple’s Siri and Core ML teams will retain their existing structures, but will report to Giannandrea instead of the company’s software chief Craig Federighi.

The appointment seems designed to boost Apple’s AI strategy at a time when it’s perceived to be seriously lagging behind Silicon Valley rivals such as Google, Facebook Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in areas such as computer vision and natural language processing. These subsets of AI are particularly important because they’re needed to power key features in Siri and other next-generation applications that rely on voice and object classification.

Apple’s failure to take the lead in AI at this point has put the company at a big disadvantage in new markets such as smart home technology. It also means its existing products such as Maps and Photos are considered inferior to similar products from Google, which can leverage better AI technology to power more features.

“This move is all about consistency and concentration,” Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE. “Apple needs consistency across all forms of AI and it needs all resources swimming in the right direction.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. agreed, saying it made sense for Apple to consolidate all of its AI teams under a single leader. He also said Apple may have done this earlier if only it could have found the right person for the job.

“AI technologies have to work together over different products and releases,” Mueller said. “This was an overdue change and a good reminder that companies sometimes delay doing what is right, because they think they don’t have the right leader in place.”

Giannandrea is clearly seen as a man capable of boosting Apple’s AI efforts on every front, having spent his time at Google working on integrating AI features with products such as Gmail, Google Docs and Google Assistant. Giannandrea joined Google in 2010 after it acquired his previous employer, Metaweb Technologies Inc., to get its hands on its knowledge database called Freebase. With Freebase, Google later built its Knowledge Graph, which serves as the main source of verified knowledge for products such as Google Search and Google Assistant.

Image: TechCrunch/Flickr