Hyundai Motor Group chairman joins 'vibe coding' session as automaker embeds AI across all operations

Hyundai Motor Group's digital transformation drive, launched in 2019, is evolving into a full-scale AI transformation as the conglomerate embeds artificial intelligence across its research and development, manufacturing and service operations. Chairman Euisun Chung has personally taken part in vibe coding sessions, signaling a top-down commitment that the group says is already producing measurable results.

The group held an "AX Achievement Presentation" for media at its Yangjae headquarters in Seoul on Wednesday, outlining the progress of its digital and AI transformation efforts and its plans going forward.

Chung pledged in 2018 to make Hyundai Motor Group "more of an IT company than any IT company," and subsequently set about building a framework for global collaboration and data-driven management. The group is now accelerating the AI transformation phase, using the data and digital work environment accumulated since then to embed AI throughout the organization.

Jin Eun-sook, president and head of ICT at Hyundai Motor and Kia, said AI is clearly an important technology but ultimately a tool that companies must put to use. "What matters is not the technology itself, but how quickly we can understand it, apply it to our work and projects, and internalize it as organizational competitiveness," she said.

She added that the group's goal is not to be the company that uses AI the most, but "the company that uses AI most effectively anywhere in the world."

Senior executives at Hyundai Motor Group are leading the AI transformation by experiencing and applying the technology in their own work. The group says hands-on engagement at the leadership level is essential to spreading new technologies across the organization.

Chung and other top executives participated in vibe coding training sessions, where they built simple games, analyzed data and created dashboards, gaining firsthand experience of the software development process.

Vibe coding is a development approach in which a developer describes the desired outcome in natural language and collaborates with AI to produce the result, rather than writing code line by line. Because the same prompt can yield different outputs, prompt design and data reliability are critical. The group said the vibe coding training was intended to convey that competitive advantage in the AI era comes not from the technology itself but from "a difference in mindset."

Hyundai Motor Group began preparing its digital transformation framework before the AI era arrived, centering its efforts on overhauling collaboration practices and data systems. The group defined the core of its DX initiative not as a simple replacement of work systems but as a fundamental change in how employees work, and set about building an environment where information and data could be shared and used freely across the organization.

To that end, the group rolled out Jira and Dooray — platforms for tracking work progress and managing decisions — along with Confluence, which supports collaborative document creation and knowledge sharing, in phases starting in 2022. It also adopted Microsoft 365, Microsoft's cloud-based collaboration platform, to enable employees at worksites around the world to collaborate in a unified environment.

On the data side, the group operates a "Global One Data Pipeline" that standardizes and connects data previously scattered across the entire value chain — spanning R&D, production, quality and sales. By integrating that data, the group has built the foundation for AI-driven decision-making and operational innovation.

AI adoption is expanding on the back of data secured through the group's digital transformation. A key example is H Chat Pro, the group's in-house generative AI platform. Operating in a secure environment, it lets employees choose from a range of external generative AI models — including ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude — and has been open to all employees for use in their daily work since 2025.

Increasingly, non-developer employees are using AI models to build and deploy their own AI agents for work tasks. As of July, H Chat Pro had more than 30,000 users — roughly 80 percent of general and research staff at Hyundai Motor and Kia.

Tangible results are emerging across a range of business areas, including R&D, manufacturing, service and customer online channels. In R&D, a "Crash Safety AI Assistant" integrates research information dispersed across multiple systems and lets engineers quickly compare and analyze similar cases, cutting the time spent searching for relevant cases and reviewing analytical materials by about 90 percent.

On the factory floor, an "AI automated recognition service" cross-checks vehicle identification numbers of cars entering the production line against system registration data in real time, generating annual cost savings of 5.24 billion won ($3.7 million) across Hyundai Motor and Kia plants in Korea and overseas. The service is deployed at all domestic plants as well as approximately 70 global production sites spanning the United States, Europe, India and the Asia-Pacific region. Additional AI applications in use at production sites include a vehicle alignment optimization technology, a maintenance support AI service and a customer review response automation solution.

The group has also built a manufacturing-focused AI agent ecosystem called eForest: Polaris to convert individual experience and know-how into digital assets for the organization. The platform supports the implementation of work experience and expertise from across manufacturing — covering quality, production, equipment and logistics — as AI agents that can be deployed directly on the factory floor.

Building on its accumulated data assets, operational experience and AI capabilities, Hyundai Motor Group plans to extend its transformation into physical AI — the convergence of AI with the physical world of vehicles, robotics, manufacturing and service operations.

"The data, operational experience and execution capabilities we have built through AX will be the most powerful foundation for preparing for the coming era of physical AI," Jin said. "We will continue to respond proactively to technological change and set new standards for the future mobility industry."