Top Three Automation Predictions for 2025

Continued interest and experimentation in AI will support learning and steady progress in 2025. Generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and edge intelligence will drive robotics projects that will combine cognitive and physical automation, for example. Citizen developers will start building genAI-powered automation applications by leveraging their domain expertise.

All promising, but challenges remain that will hinder progress in 2025. We are just beginning to understand how to manage the diverse and growing number of AI models, and we are faced with new questions. What level of autonomy provides the right balance of risk and efficiency? How and when do we bring people into the loop? How do we reliably extract and provide enterprise data for AI?

Despite the clear benefits and enthusiasm, these challenges in implementation will hinder 2025 gains. Among all the AI ​​agent discussions, businesses will see only moderate success in employee support applications, which are mostly less critical. GenAI’s ability to create autonomous, unstructured workflow models and adapt to the dynamic nature of real-world processes will have to wait.

What this means is that the key to automation success in 2025 will be balancing AI innovation with the scale and reliability of traditional automation tools and methods. To help you strike that balance, let’s take a look at Forrester’s top three automation predictions for 2025:

GenAI will manage less than 1% of core business processes.

GenAI will impact process design, development and data integration, reducing design and development time as well as the need for desktop and mobile interfaces. However, this genAI efficiency still surpasses existing digital and robotic process automation platforms that orchestrate the underlying process subject to deterministic and rule-driven models. For 2025, decision makers can balance AI innovation with the scale and reliability of traditional automation tools and methods, recognizing that deterministic automation will remain in control of the core long-term process and that AI models will support bursts of insight and efficiency.

A quarter of robotics projects will attempt to combine cognitive and physical automation.

GenAI innovations, advanced intelligence, and evolving communication services are encouraging physical robotics developers to take a fresh look at embodied artificial intelligence. This will enable robots to sense and react to their environment rather than following pre-programmed rules and workflows, exposing them to more complex and unpredictable situations. Decision makers in asset-intensive industries will begin to see the value of consolidation and invest in physical automation projects to improve their operational efficiency.

Citizen developers will deliver 30% of genAI-powered automation applications.

The citizen developer train continues to move forward and now includes genAI-powered automation applications. They have the necessary domain expertise to design and develop these solutions. A significant portion of GenAI-powered automation applications will be delivered by citizen developers in 2025. Automation centers of excellence and line-of-business management will be challenged to train and safely enable their use and control the proliferation of AI models and co-pilot platforms.

The coming year promises to be a dynamic period for automation, characterized by increasing excitement and activity surrounding agency and AI-driven operations. The year 2025 will serve as a crucial stepping stone to prepare for the integration of physical robots, digital systems and human endpoints. Organizations that make the most of these automation trends will be those that learn to balance the risk and reward of automation and target the right use cases for their organization.

Download our free Predictions guideIt covers many of our top tech and security predictions for 2025. Find additional free resources, including webinars, at: Predictions 2025 center.

This article was written and originally published by Craig Le Clair, Vice President, Principal Analyst. Here.