Meta poaches Apple design exec Alan Dye to lead new creative studio in Reality Labs

Alan Dye, the design manager who led Apple’s user interface team for the past decade, is leaving the company to join Meta. report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

This is a significant win for Meta as the company focuses on consumer devices such as smart glasses and virtual reality headsets. Dye will focus on improving the AI ​​features in these devices and report directly to Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth.

At Apple, Dye will be replaced by Steve Lemay, who “has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999,” according to a statement from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Bloomberg.

It appears Meta is recruiting from its competitors to help the company compete in the AI ​​race, as Meta also poached researchers from OpenAI this summer. (Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly hand-delivered homemade products soup to an OpenAI employee in a recruitment campaign; OpenAI lead researcher Mark Chen said he has since delivered his own soup to promising Meta recruits.)

Shortly after news of Dye’s departure came out, Zuckerberg stepped up announced a new creative studio within Reality Labs that would be led by Dye. He’s joined there by Billy Sorrentino, another former Apple designer who led Reality Labs’ interface design; Joshua To, who led Reality Labs’ interface design; Meta’s industrial design team, led by Pete Bristol; and its metaverse design and art teams led by Jason Rubin.

Zuckerberg said the studio would “bring together design, fashion and technology to define the next generation of our products and experiences.”

“Our idea is to treat intelligence as a new design material and imagine what becomes possible when it is abundant, capable, and human-centered,” Meta’s CEO wrote on Threads. “We plan to take design within Meta to the next level and bring together a talented group with a combination of craftsmanship, creative vision, systems thinking and deep experience building iconic products that bridge the gap between hardware and software.”

This article was updated after publication with additional information about Meta’s plans.