UiPath Inc. today announced a preview of its upcoming Agent Builder tool, outlining its vision to combine its expertise in robotic process automation with generative artificial intelligence models and accelerate enterprise automation to the next level .

The new tool was unveiled at UiPath’s annual user conference, UiPath Forward 2024 in Las Vegas. The company said it would launch in preview in December as part of its UiPath Studio suite of development tools. It will give developers everything they need to design, build, evaluate and release AI-based agents that can collaborate with its traditional process automation bots.

The company is pushing the narrative of “agentic automation,” which focuses on AI agents that go further than traditional chatbots such as ChatGPT. AI agents are designed not only to understand questions and requests and generate responses or suggestions, but also to take action on users’ behalf, essentially automating various aspects of their work.

UiPath has made a name for itself in the field of robotic process automation, which is a subset of AI focused on machine automation. Its platform provides tools that businesses can use to automate repetitive business tasks such as data entry. They study how human workers accomplish these tasks, so they can replicate the process, freeing up those employees to do higher-level work.

“UiPath is going through another transition,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst at SiliconANGLE sister market research firm theCUBE Research. “It has dominated the RPA market, where it was an innovator, and now has the opportunity to evolve as a leader in agent-based automation.

RPA and generative AI will work better together

At UiPath Forward, the startup explained, its robots are best suited to perform repetitive, rules-based tasks to improve business efficiency and reduce manual effort. On the other hand, AI agents adapt better to new challenges, make intelligent decisions, and manage complex, multi-step processes. In other words, they do very different things.

According to UiPath, “agentic automation” refers to the combination of RPA bots, AI agents, humans and AI models, and believes it has the potential to expand reach and impact of automation in enterprise environments. According to UiPath, by combining AI agents with its robots, it will automate more complex tasks that were previously impossible for anyone but humans to complete. They will also be able to make intelligent decisions on behalf of users, the company said.

UiPath Founder and Managing Director Daniel Dines said agentic automation is the next evolution of RPA and will help customers automate entire business processes from start to finish.

He explained that AI agents can leverage the millions of automations developed by UiPath customers to integrate with thousands of enterprise applications. At the same time, these agents will adhere to the strict governance controls provided by the UiPath platform.

The company also talked about its concept of agentic orchestration, which is a process that governs the design, implementation, operation, monitoring and optimization of agentic AI workflows. Customers will be able to manage the entire process lifecycle, from start to finish, from the UiPath platform, ensuring humans can work with AI agents in a compliant manner.

With UiPath Agent Builder, developers will be able to create AI agents that can integrate its RPA bots to automate various advanced business processes. They will be able to access a number of pre-built agents in the UiPath agent catalog, or create their own from scratch, and they can also choose to integrate third-party AI agents.

“I think of RPA as the plumbing of agentic automation,” Vellante said. “It is necessary but not sufficient to succeed. In my opinion, traditional robots will become a commodity as value moves up the intelligence value chain toward agents and control frameworks that manage and execute based on business objectives.

Maureen Fleming, an analyst at International Data Corp., said agentic automation is about the convergence of AI and rules-based automation technologies. “The combination of generative AI and AI agents will be the first time that knowledge workers can meaningfully benefit from the benefits of automation to help them do their jobs, creating the next level of business value. automation in business,” she said.

UiPath Autopilot Goes Live

Generative AI was a recurring theme throughout UiPath’s announcements at Forward today, with the company also announcing the general availability of its new Autopilot tool, a conversational agent designed to improve worker productivity.

UiPath Autopilot provides a conversational interface that makes it easy for any employee to take advantage of the company’s agents and workflow automations. They will be able to use it to find answers to their questions, based on the company’s own data, analyze documents, automate copy and paste between applications and much more.

Better yet, customers will be able to choose from a range of models with big tongues under the hood. One option will be Inflection AI Enterprise from Inflection AI Inc., a security-focused LLM aimed at highly regulated industries. Rather than running in the cloud, it uses Intel Corp.’s Gaudi 3 processors. to process data on-site, ensuring that confidential data does not fall into the wrong hands.

UiPath presents exciting opportunities as it is a founder-led company with strong integrations, low-code features and a strong vision,” Vellante said. “It now needs to bring these elements together, as well as its partnerships, to achieve its goals. I’m curious to see how UiPath responds to this latest challenge.

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