Apple Just Admitted Siri Is in Trouble by Poaching Google's AI Marketing Chief
Hiring a Google VP to market AI you haven't shipped yet tells you everything about where Apple Intelligence actually stands.
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Apple just hired Lilian Rincon, a veteran Google VP who spent nearly a decade overseeing Google's shopping and assistant products, as its new Vice President of Product Marketing for AI. She'll report directly to marketing chief Greg "Joz" Joswiak and lead marketing for Apple Intelligence and Siri.
Let's call this what it is: a distress signal wrapped in a press release.
The Marketing Problem Nobody Can Solve
Apple's AI marketing problem isn't that they can't sell things. Apple is arguably the greatest marketing machine in history. The problem is that you can't market what you haven't shipped.
The revamped Siri. the one that's supposed to actually compete with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. has been delayed repeatedly and is now slated for iOS 27. Meanwhile, Apple Intelligence features have rolled out to collective shrugs. Notification summaries that hallucinate. Image generation that's years behind Midjourney. An AI writing assistant that feels like a worse version of Grammarly.
Rincon is a great hire on paper. She knows AI products, she knows assistant products, she knows marketing. But her job description. leading marketing for Apple Intelligence. assumes there will be something worth marketing. That's the bet Apple is making.
What It Really Tells Us
When Apple creates a brand new VP-level position specifically for AI marketing and fills it with someone from Google, it signals three things:
One: Apple knows its AI narrative is losing. The conversation is about ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. not Apple Intelligence. Two: Apple believes this is a marketing problem as much as a product problem. They need someone who can change the story. Three: Apple is about to go big on AI messaging. Expect WWDC to be the most AI-focused Apple event in history.
The question is whether Rincon can convince the world that Apple's AI is worth paying attention to before the window of relevance closes. Google's own Bard-to-Gemini rebrand shows how hard it is to change an AI narrative once the market has made up its mind.
Good luck, Lilian. You're going to need it.
Hire first reported by Reuters and 9to5Mac.