In 2024, the RPA market will face significant changes due to various key trends. These include the impact of AI on RPA, shifts in the market landscape, changes in RPA’s role within the broader automation framework and new data management methods. Whether you want to reduce manual tasks for your team, get more from your automation program, or simply learn about the future of RPA, these evidence-based trends and expert predictions will help you know what to expect in the coming year.

RPA Enhanced by AI

AI will be the top trend in 2024 for most tech areas, including RPA. (The robots might be worried about their jobs right now.) According to Gartner’s 2023 Critical Capabilities for Robotic Process Automation report, almost every RPA vendor has tried, or plans to try, using GenAI (like GPT models) in their products or is adding connections to popular GPT providers. These trials will likely turn into real products in 2024. (Source: Gartner)

Gartner’s 2023 Magic Quadrant™ for RPA also predicts that by 2025, 90% of RPA vendors will offer generative AI-assisted automation. (Source: UiPath)

What might “generative-AI-assisted automation” look like? AI will likely make it easier for developers to create bots with features like guided navigation and chatbot help. You’ll also see AI improving the bots themselves. The bots will get better at:

Handling unexpected situations like humans (current bots often fail when their environment changes).

Understanding messy or unstructured data.

Making decisions based on context.

Generative AI will also help bots create workflows automatically based on the data they receive. Some software, like Appian RPA, already lets developers record their tasks in a browser and use RPA to design a workflow for automation, but AI could make this process even easier.

Ongoing RPA Market Consolidation

The RPA market isn’t experiencing significant growth, but it is consolidating and becoming increasingly competitive. Gartner’s 2023 Critical Capabilities for Robotic Process Automation report says:

Despite slower growth, the RPA market is still evolving quickly. As of January 2023, there are over 60 vendors worldwide, but the market is becoming more consolidated and competitive. Large software companies are entering the market, and dedicated RPA vendors are fighting hard to be on top and make their products better. (Source: Gartner)

Forrester describes the RPA market as facing a big decision point. They mentioned that 

“Many of the big RPA companies have been making their products better for a long time and now want to do more than just RPA. They are trying to do this by making their products bigger and by buying other companies, which makes their range of products even more complicated. Because of changes like these, where RPA is becoming more common and simpler, Forrester thinks that the cost of using it will go down.” (Source:Forrester)

RPA Becomes a Built-in Feature

As a natural outcome of the trend toward consolidating the RPA market, companies are using and buying RPA less as a separate tool and more as part of a bigger automation system. Businesses now prefer automation tools that smoothly fit in with existing systems, are easy to maintain, and don’t need specialized skills to handle. This unified approach stops separate pockets of automation from forming (and helps IT teams connect gaps when these pockets already exist). Here’s Gartner’s assessment 

RPA vendors are either introducing new products to their lineups or being acquired to create more versatile task and process automation platforms with enhanced capabilities.

While this might sound simple andhelpful, it can also be confusing for buyers. Forrester explains:

RPA buyers have to navigate these choices while trying to achieve two things: making their RPA setups bigger and more industrialized, and incorporating them into the wider mix of automation technologies known as the automation fabric.

(Source:  Forrester)

Improved Data Support for Bots

Just like any other digital tool, robots work with data and should be able to access it easily. They shouldn’t have to worry about how data is organized, how to control who can access it and how to make sure it’s accurate when adding new data. In 2024, these concerns will be taken care of and included in how robots access data. The best robots will use a data platform that brings together different data sources into one organized system with clear rules.

Because people are realizing more how important it is to keep data organized and accurate for RPA, companies will create better systems to manage data. These systems will define how different data sources relate, follow rules to change or check data and control who can access it.

Movement Toward AGI and Related Research

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a popular topic among AI companies today. AGI refers to AI reaching a level where it can outperform humans in most tasks and critical thinking. However, so far, it remains mostly a concept.

Google’s Deepmind is one of the key players in this field, along with OpenAI, Meta, Adept AI and others. Currently, there’s little agreement on what AGI is, what it will look like, and how AI leaders will determine if they have achieved AGI.

So far, most AGI research has been done in isolation. In the future, AGI will remain a top priority for research and development. However, like other major tech and AI projects in the past, it will likely become more collaborative, mainly to develop a clear definition and framework for AGI. While true AGI might not be achieved in the near future, generative AI will continue to get closer to this goal as AI companies work to define it more clearly.