Ford Motor Company has rehired approximately 350 veteran engineers over the past three years to reprogram and retrain its artificial intelligence (AI) tools used for quality control and defect detection. The company acknowledged that its AI systems had been delivering poor quality control results when operating independently, prompting the return of these experienced "gray beard" engineers to improve the technology, Bloomberg reported.
Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told Bloomberg, “Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you use to train it. Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.”
Kumar Galhotra, Ford’s chief operating officer, added, “We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems. We brought back technical specialists … [T]hey hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor.”
As a result of these efforts, Ford announced its best quality ranking in 16 years. However, the company still leads the nation in vehicle recalls, having recalled roughly 20 million vehicles in the past year, according to an iSeeCars study.
Financially, Ford reported its biggest quarterly loss in roughly 17 years in 2026, with an $11.1 billion net loss in the fourth quarter. This loss was driven largely by setbacks in its electric vehicle division, tariff impacts, and a fire at an aluminum supplier. The company projects $1 billion in warranty and material spending for the year.
Ford’s renewed focus on combining experienced human expertise with AI technology highlights the challenges of fully automating quality control in the automotive industry.
Ford Motor Company on a pick-up truck during Venezuela’s AutoFest 2026 at Ciudad Tamanaco Shopping Center in Caracas. (Photo by Juan BARRETO / AFP via Getty Images)
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