In a bid to take advantage of AI technology, which developers claim can cut costs and boost productivity, US carmaker, Ford adopted it across some of its operations including for quality checks.

Few months down the line, executives said the firm has rehired more than 300 “veteran” quality inspectors in recent years to make up for the pitfalls of automated systems.

“Artificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it’s only as good as the information you used to train it,” Charles Poon, vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters.

“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,” he said.

The US automaker is among many to have seized on the buzz around AI, particularly amid Wall Street frenzy about the tech’s potential to increase margins.

Poon told reporters on Wednesday the firm’s AI-driven checks had failed to live up to expectations.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product,” he said.

Poon reportedly pointed to automated tools lacking the training and expertise of veteran technicians – many of whom he said had left the company before their knowledge could be used to improve its tech.

He said these human workers had since been reintroduced to train up its systems, as well as mentor younger workers.

Ford’s admission of its AI failings came as it lauded its return to the top of an index used as an industry benchmark to measure vehicle quality. The company said “reaching best-in-class quality required a significant talent refresh”.

This involved replacing senior leaders across engineering, supply chain and manufacturing, it said, as well as hiring the roughly 300 veteran engineers “who carry the hard-earned wisdom of decades of design”.