What is AI automation? Your guide for 2025
Do you love ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini but struggle to integrate it into your processes?
Being a standalone chatbot, ChatGPT isn’t designed to be freely integrated with other apps. Instead, you’ll need to integrate your apps with the OpenAI API, which lets you tap into the same large language models that power ChatGPT.
Building this integration — and integrations to other exciting AI apps — involves working with AI automation. This is an exciting field we’re passionate advocates of and can help your organization enable in an easy, economically efficient, and scalable way.
Keep reading as we explore AI automation in this in-depth guide.
What is AI automation?
AI automation is the use of software programs to automatically execute tasks with the help of artificial intelligence. These programs are also known as AI automations, and their ability to reason and generate content lets them automate processes that involve more problem-solving and creativity.
For example, we can have an AI automation that uses the OpenAI API to summarize new emails in Gmail, and then post the summaries as Slack messages.
AI and automation aren’t the same things. There are also many forms of automation. Let’s explore these issues.
AI and automation: What’s the difference?
AI is a computer’s capability to simulate human intelligence when performing tasks like solving problems, learning, and writing. Different AI technologies enable different capabilities: for example, machine learning technology helps computers learn, while natural language processing technology helps computers understand and create text.
Automation is the process of automatically executing tasks with minimal human input. It can be done with physical machines or software, and may or may not incorporate AI. But non-AI-powered automations may be less “smart.”
For example, while the AI automation mentioned above can still create Slack messages from new emails without using the OpenAI API, its ability to transform email data is more limited. For instance, it can’t summarize our emails, which may make it less useful.
RPA, BPA, and IA: What are the differences?
RPA (robotic process automation), BPA (business process automation), and IA (intelligent automation) are just three of the many types of automation activities. Here’s how they differ:
Business process automation (BPA) refers to the automation of any business-related process. These processes could be the sending of invoice reminders or saving of published social media posts to cloud storage, for example.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software robots to automate tasks by programming these robots to mimic human actions. These actions include clicking things on a screen or entering keyboard commands. Robotic process automation can be considered a type of business process automation if it’s applied to business-related processes.
Intelligent automation (IA), or intelligent process automation, is robotic process automation that incorporates AI. It’s helpful for automating workflows that involve more complex data processing or decision-making than traditional, non-AI-powered automation.
Use cases for AI Automation
Almost any organizational function can benefit from AI automation. Let’s take a look:
Finance can generate comprehensive financial reports quicker and with minimal human error. One example is using Google Gemini to analyze financial data from Stripe.
Marketing can produce marketing content, such as blog posts, social media posts, and press releases, in much less time than creating these pieces manually. If you’re a real estate agent, for instance, you can use Runway to effortlessly turn photos of your clients’ homes into videos for posting on social media.
Sales can automate responses to sales pitch emails to keep conversations moving and close deals sooner. This can be done by building an OpenAI integration that writes replies to new emails, for example.
Customer service can use AI chatbots to provide answers to simple customer queries. If you’re using Make, you can power your chatbot with your AI app of choice, including OpenAI, Gemini, and more.
Want even deeper examples of AI automation at work?
One Make customer, James David, has built his own AI marketing software to produce search-engine-optimized blog posts in a flash.
Meanwhile, other customers are harnessing Make and AI to analyze customer feedback, generate non-fiction book content, operate their workforce-as-a-service platform, and more. In fact, the use of AI in Make scenarios has quadrupled over 2024! We’re confident there are still many more use cases to be discovered.
What are the benefits of automating business processes with AI?
Benefits of automating your business processes with AI include:
Scaling your operations: AI automations can operate round the clock and perform tasks much quicker than humans can, thus ramping up your business output.
Minimizing human error: Machines execute tasks systematically and much more reliably than humans, who may make mistakes that lead to delays, customer dissatisfaction, or even higher costs.
Reducing business costs: AI automations help you handle more business operations with the same amount of or even fewer resources, and keep costs down.
Increasing your revenue: Some customers have reported 10x’ing their revenue by building AI automations in Make — and without increasing headcount.
How to automate with AI
Our Make no-code automation tool helps you automate with AI without taking the conventional — and more complex — method of coding API integrations that connect AI and non-AI apps. It offers app modules preconfigured with the code they need to take actions like watching for new data or performing a search.
So, to build a working AI automation in Make, you just need to create a new automation (called a “scenario”) and link these modules in the right order. Then, connect your app accounts and configure the modules to use the appropriate data output from previous modules.
For example, this Make scenario automates the process of conducting research with Perplexity AI and saving the findings to Google Sheets:
(Copy this template to build this scenario for yourself.)
Make also contains AI-powered features that simplify the scenario-building process. These include:
An AI assistant that can build scenarios to meet your objectives, explain how your scenario works, troubleshoot errors, and more.
A “Fill by AI” feature that can automatically fill out your modules’ fields for you. It makes expressing complex formulas in human language so much easier.
Make supports 2,000+ apps, and you can start using it for free. Simply sign up for a Make account here.
Scaling your operations with AI automation
With AI automation, scaling your operations is a breeze.
Take the example of calling leads to explore partnership opportunities. Instead of hiring dozens of staff to make calls, you could build an AI automation that automates calls with the Vapi app:
With this setup, users who submit inquiries will receive a phone call from an AI voice agent and can talk to it to learn more about your offerings.
The automation effortlessly calls back every lead — and can even chat with multiple leads at once — ensuring that no lead goes unpursued.
Which AI is best for automation?
The best AI for your automation is the one most appropriate for your needs. Popular AI apps and their use cases include:
OpenAI: Generate text and images, and convert speech to text. This app is currently the second most-used app on Make.
Dumpling AI: Extract data from files, scrape URLs, generate images, and more.
Vapi: Deploy voice agents that can engage in back-and-forth phone conversations.
HeyGen: Create talking-head videos and video translations.
Explore these AI apps — and over 200 others — in Make’s app directory.
Challenges of automating with AI
While AI is powerful, its output isn’t perfect. For example, the output may contain inaccuracies or deviate from your business’s tone of voice and brand values.
So, instead of adopting a fully hands-off approach to AI automation, double-check AI output before using it. Make’s Human in the Loop app helps you do just that, by introducing a layer of human control into your automations.
In your scenarios, add the app’s “Create a review request” module right after the AI app module that generates the output:
Then, when your scenario runs, you’ll get a request to review the generated AI output. You can even edit it. It’s only when you’ve approved the output that it’s used.
While Human in the Loop is available to invited enterprise customers at this time, we’ll be rolling out a simplified version to all users. This way, anyone can use AI automations, with peace of mind that they have full oversight of the output created.
Security of AI automation
If you’re using AI automations to process confidential business data, it’s essential that the automation keeps your data safe at every step.
Among other security measures, Make relies on the TLS 1.2 and 1.3 protocol and AES 256 encryption to protect your data while it is transmitted between our platform and your scenarios’ apps for processing. Learn how we secure your data here.
Separately, check how your automations’ AI apps use your data — and whether they’ll use it to train their AI models, in particular. While sharing your data may help improve the AI apps’ output, you may not want to allow this for especially sensitive data.
How to get started with AI automation (for free)
To get started with AI automation, follow these steps:
Research AI apps you can delegate tasks to. For instance, instead of writing text by hand, get the OpenAI app to generate text for you. Sign up for the apps you’ve decided to use.
Map out your automation workflow. Identify its steps and the apps you use to execute them. An example is using the Eden AI app to summarize emails, and then posting the summaries on the Slack app.
Create a free Make account. The free plan is all you need to start building AI automations on our platform.
Build your scenario. Set up app modules that correspond to each workflow step you’ve identified earlier. Connect the modules in the right sequence and map the data they need to work.
Test your scenario to ensure it works. If it does, schedule and activate it.
Learn more about creating Make scenarios here.
You can also collaborate with a certified Make expert to get your AI automations up and running. Find experts in our Make partner directory.
Learn AI automation
Want to learn more about AI automation? Check out these resources:
Watch our AI tools YouTube training for a beginner-friendly introduction to automating with AI.
Browse our AI templates for AI automation inspiration.
Attend our webinars on automation, AI, and boosting workplace productivity (and catch up on their replays).
The future of automating with AI
With AI capabilities only getting more advanced, there’s never been a better time to explore automating with AI. We’ve identified three AI automation trends that will take center stage in 2025:
Generative AI will get more sophisticated, paving the way for even more realistic image, video, and audio creation at scale.
Increased human-AI collaboration thanks to tools like Make’s Human in the Loop app, which offers more opportunities for infusing AI output with human oversight and creativity.
Hyper-personalization of user experiences, with AI delivering outcomes that match individuals’ needs and preferences to a T.
The AI revolution isn’t coming. It’s already here. The only question is: will you be a leader or a follower?
Book a demo with us to learn how Make can unlock your organization’s AI capabilities and help you lead the charge.
