Apple is affecting 121 employees by closing its Siri data operations center in San Diego

According to Bloomberg, Apple is eliminating an office in San Diego, Texas, that housed part of the Data Operations Annotations division, which among other things reviews Siri client responses and helps improve system accuracy. In San Diego, the reorganization affects 121 jobs. If they are willing to relocate, Apple has offered all affected employee’s positions at its Austin offices.

The Data Operations Annotations team works globally to improve the accuracy of Siri and other machine learning-powered Apple services. Contractors in Ireland made headlines in 2019 for revealing the types of private conversations they were listening to while working as Siri data graders. Apple eventually dismissed the contractors and hired full-time employees to do the same task, as well as making the procedure opt-in for end users and ceasing to send raw audio clips to its servers entirely.

The stakes are lower in this scenario. Apple appears to have decided to consolidate its US operations in Austin rather than continue to have the same workforce in both San Diego and Austin. Nonetheless, staff at the San Diego site appeared taken aback by the relocation. Their employment will be terminated if they are unwilling to relocate to Austin.

At WWDC in June, Apple is likely to showcase a big revamp of Siri capabilities powered by generative AI and huge language model systems. As being said via Bloomberg, some of the people in Data Operations Annotations are assigned to work sector that’s aimed to enhance LLM’s performance.