FORWARD, UiPath’s annual customer and developer event in Las Vegas, kicked off this week and the company used the event to announce the addition of agentic automation platform. The intelligent automation giant announced the availability of a preview version of Agent Builder—a tool enabling developers to build, evaluate, and publish AI agents that work cooperatively with robots on UiPath’s automation platform—coming in December.
If there has been an identifiable trend in business process automation in recent months that can be traced directly to the introduction of generative AI and the LLMs that underpin them, it is the explosion of announcements from technology providers heralding the arrival of AI agents. Broadly, AI agents, through natural language prompts, are able to understand user intent, retrieve data, build a multi-step plan, and take action to execute the plan autonomously.
“Agentic automation is the natural evolution of RPA,” said Daniel Dines, Founder and CEO. “Since our inception, we have helped our customers revolutionize their businesses by emulating humans through robotic process automation. Now, we’re advancing enterprise automation with agents, allowing customers to automate entire end-to-end processes and orchestrate workflows seamlessly. The result is more substantial business outcomes, greater productivity, and more customer-facing direct benefits from automation.”
UiPath executives said they see agentic automation as the primary way to orchestrate AI, robots, humans and models for the automation of complex end-to-end workflows. They plan to make the preview version available before the end of the year. UiPath users can register for access here.
Other announcements made at the event so far include the availability of Autopilot for everyone, a GenAI agent non-technical users can leverage to complete complex tasks with a conversational interface; a partnership with AI technology provider Anthropic that will integrate that company’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet LLM to drive Autopilot for everyone, Clipboard AI and more; and the addition of Banco Azteca, one of Mexico’s largest banks, as a customer.
Stay tuned for more Automation Today coverage from FORWARD.