The article has named sources for its quotes, whereas your comment relies entirely on "almost certainly" which sounds a lot less informed.
Nothing in the article contradicts their (IMHO accurate) claim. Three years ago boardrooms were not drinking the LLM Kool-aid yet, while ML-powered QC has been around for years. Remember Silicon Valley's hot dog vs not hot dog? That's pretty much all you need, only the hot dog is a car part.
OP to me sounds more authentic and seems to have inside information.
After a quick search I found a publication actually mentioning about these tools:
Ford previously told Business Insider that it had developed two bespoke AI-enhanced scanning tools that helped validate that cars were properly assembled before rolling off the lot. The tools, called AiTriz and MAIVs, both debuted in 2024. https://autos.yahoo.com/policy-and-environment/articles/ford...
And after doing cursory research on these tools, it is clear they are rudimentary (as compared to SOTA LLMs), they were essentially smartphone mounted on stands and doing visual checks using the camera - so OP could be very right.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-uses-ai-cameras-in-fact...