The State of AI in Software Testing: What does the Future Hold?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently the backbone in influencing and transforming many sectors, impacting our daily lives. Industries like healthcare, education, finance, technology, and retail are adopting AI to work efficiently, reduce costs, and automate tasks. Not just in these areas but also in our homes, AI is taking control of televisions, cell phones, digital assistants, home automation, and security cameras.

As AI is in a constant race to exercise more control over our lives, it is essential to create and validate all systems safely and securely. This point is where AI for software testing comes into place.

This article will discuss how you can use AI in software testing. Subsequently, we will understand how the HeadSpin platform, with its exclusive features, helps in an exceptional software testing process.

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

Artificial Intelligence or AI is the ability of a computer-controlled system (computer) or a robot to complete tasks usually done by human beings; they mimic human intelligence and insight while executing these tasks.

In simple words, we can say that we teach computers or robots or machines to think and learn like a human. This field of study tries to make computers intelligent.

Examples of AI include automatic vehicles, Alexa, Siri, and other smart assistants, computer bots, social media monitoring, disease mapping, email spam filters, etc.

What is Software Testing?

Software testing is a process that involves evaluation and verification of any software or application to check whether it is working correctly and whether it does what it is supposed to do.

This process also matches the standard requirements with the actual ones. It ensures that the software and application are free from defects and bugs.

Importance of Software Testing

Suppose you find any error, defect, or bug. In that case, you can identify and solve it with the help of software testing before delivering the software. Thus, you can reduce included development costs and improve end-user performance.

The next section will explain how to use AI while testing software applications.

AI-based Testing

The AI technology helps test software effectively and appropriately before deployment, ensuring high performance, security, and reliability. These factors result in customer satisfaction, time-saving, and cost-effectiveness in the long run.

The core objective of AI in software testing is to make the testing process smooth, smart, and highly effective. AI testing tools are used for logical reasoning, problem-solving, executing tests, and checking and testing algorithms to improve the overall testing process.

Here are some benefits of testing software with AI:

1. Improved accuracy
2. Visual validation
3. Better test coverage
4. Faster time to market
5. Lesser defects, errors, and bugs
6. Saving of time, money, and efforts

AI for Software Testing: Current State

‘Test bots’ is what we refer to when we talk about AI in its current state. They perform activities such as failure detection, modeling, application discovery, and test generation.

Some of the past decades’ AI-driven testing approaches are:

1. Visual Testing: To support image-based learning and test the look and feel of an application.
2. Declarative Testing: Telling systems how to determine what and carry out the test.
3. Differential Testing: Performing different applications, comparing different versions, classifying, and learning from the feedback.
4. Self-healing Automation: Autocorrection

AI and Software Testing: Future State

There are AI trends that started in the past decade. Mobile application testing, user interface testing, functional testing of the web, and auto-correction are examples of this type where AI is in use.

These AI functions are so well-performing that there is an expectation that they will continue in use and will help in enhancing the framework and tools for testing specific problems.

There will come a time when AI will take over the automation tasks in the future. There will be technological progress, and we will train machines for higher-order assignments. AI will take over the tasks and tackle issues requiring deeper thinking contexts.

How Will AI Change the World?

Here are some instances of AI changing the world.

1. Customer service: Currently, there are few places where AI is used to make appointments, but the prediction is that these avenues will increase in the future. AI will come into place not just in making appointments, but also in other customer services.
2. Education: After COVID-19, most things became digital, so did education. From classes to textbooks, everything has become digitized. In the future, this trend will continue.
3. Healthcare: For disease detection, accurate diagnoses, virtual nursing, patient data, drug discovery, and other services, AI is coming into place and will rule this department completely.
4. Media and security: AI is solidifying its position in detecting fraud and cyber-crime.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been there for many years. Companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have been actively taking an interest in this technology for various applications.

With the help of AI, companies can fuel their growth and use of AI. The trend will continue with the testers’ community, who have been consistently using AI for software testing.

HeadSpin has been making software testing easier using AI technology with its seamless integration with CI/CD workflows that enables functional and performance testing before and after release. It supports all the testing frameworks, including native Appium.

Moreover, HeadSpin’s AI platform surfaces issues automatically and recognizes underlying root causes across all stack layers, from quantifying audio/video QoE to code visibility. The platform also delivers regression and aggregation insights throughout the digital experience, from planning and development to troubleshooting and operations.