AI in Testing: The latest way of automation

Mohamed Yaseen
Nerd For Tech
Published in
5 min readAug 31, 2021

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The development of an agile approach has made companies innovative and fast-moving. While the delivery time falls, technological complexity is growing to offer a good user experience and to retain a competitive edge, as does the rate at which attractive innovations need to be implemented.

We have used continuous automation-based testing to fulfill the continuous involvement and delivery demands, but how do we assess when these patterns persist and gaps widen? Since now is the moment for digital transformation, digital testing is needed to address the future qualitative requirements pushed by AI, IoT, robots, and quantum.

More on real-time risk assessment, the expectations of testing are now. To address the challenging expectations in today’s settings, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can assist us to get to them by emulating intelligent human behavior.

After Continuous Testing

If we evaluate the path since the agile image debuted, the way apps are delivered has radically altered. In a month, or perhaps more than a month, there was a release before agile. Agile businesses will sprint for two weeks and release within two weeks. To achieve this, ongoing tests were conducted where automation suites for regression and health tests were built. This enabled rapid delivery and rapid test cycles.

Now that the world is heading towards digital transformation, it is essential to exert pressure to anticipate market demands and develop a system that is predictive and scalable enough to account for future trends. To speed up the process, testing needs more help. AI can help us get there by emulating intelligent human behavior through machine learning and predictive analysis.

What is AI?

In basic words, AI allows machines to learn facts that enable them to decide. The algorithms are not meant to address a specific problem but are built so that the system can make a data-based conclusion.

How AI can be used in different software testing methods?

a) Unit tests — To ensure that the build is reliable and tested, unit testing is highly crucial. A developer may minimize the flaky test cases and maintain unit tests with AI-powered unit testing technologies such as RPA.

b) API testing- By getting into the underlying cause of the problem, API testing saves time and effort. The difficulty with UI tests is that they are no longer trustworthy as UI is flexible, but API tests provide a deeper insight into the program and strike the underlying cause of the problem, which finally makes the application more resilient.

Many technologies are used to make API tests sophisticated by transforming manual UI tests into automated API tests, reducing the technical skills necessary to implement API tests, and allowing companies to develop a complete API testing plan that measures up.

c) UI testing- In automation the first step is to transform manual UI tests to automated testing. Some solutions use AI to run test cases across several platforms and browsers, to learn about the functional flow, to save maintenance, and to make testing more reliable.

Popular AI Testing Tools

  1. Applitools- It is a visual testing and surveillance tool that supports AI that can perform tests in many browsers and platforms. It utilizes AI to detect and classify significant changes in UI as bugs/desired changes. It also uses ML/AI-based automatic maintenance (can group comparable pages/browsers/devices with similar groupings). Step by Step Guide
  2. Testim- It makes machine learning the most important component of automation that is test performance and maintenance.
  3. Sealights- AI and machine learning are used by Sealights to evaluate code and conduct tests across the affected region. It can be a test unit of any type, operating, performance, manual, etc. It gives valuable ‘ Quality Risk’ insights that concentrate users on matters by letting them know what files/methods/lines have changed exactly in the latest version that has not been checked with a certain sort of test (or any test type).
  4. Test.AI- Test. AI builds as a tool to add a Selenium and Appium AI brain. It was designed by Jason Arbon who is co-author and founder of How Google Tests Software. Tests are created in a simple manner comparable to the Cucumber BDD syntax, so no code and the element IDs need to be messed with.
  • As a genuine person, IDENTIFIES your app’s screens and components.
  • User scenarios for AI EXECUTES — test on request when ready to go.
  • Elements of AI RECOGNICE so that your test won’t break although things change.

5. MABL- MABL can automatically identify whether parts from your application have changed as well as upgrade testing dynamically to adjust for the changes, just like the other AI-based test automation solutions. The workflow to be tested must only be displayed, and MABL performs the rest.

6. Retest- Retest advocates a new testing technique, which consists of “smart” monkey trials and “difference testing” and is more like a GUI version than traditional testing. This program performs Monkey tests that artificially intelligent the monkey (also called Surili) can instruct people through user behaviors.

7. ReportPortal- As the name indicates, ReportPortal is an IA-powered automation solution that concentrates primarily on the review and administration of reports. According to its webpage.

  1. Manage all your automation results and reports in one place.
  2. Make automation results analysis actionable & collaborative.
  3. Establish fast traceability with defect management.
  4. Accelerate routine results analysis.
  5. Visualize metrics and analytics.
  6. Make smarter decisions together.

8. Functionize- Functionize offers an entire solution with fewer/no maintenances efforts with the aid of AI for seamless automation. It detects and corrects faulty test screens so that human maintenance is eliminated. Functionalization employs machine education for functional testing and is comparable to other marketing tools in terms of its skills, such as fast testing (without scripts) and doing numerous tests in minutes. It also allows test suites to be scalable by keeping them in the functional test cloud.

Challenges of AI in Testing

The process of machine learning depends on the data, which results in a significant amount of the dataset. Model AI testing scenarios should be prepared to recognize and delete human distortions typically included in training and testing datasets. The AI- and Machine Learning processes are lacking awareness, and the testers need adequate training.

Conclusion

The future is all about IA and machine learning technology, as we advance from a linear waterfall paradigm to a more agile one. As a testing device, we need to start exploring and using AI tools to learn about the different elements of AI. We must be extremely interested in the manner that AI has already tested and delivered the applications in several locations, whether it is Amazon Chatbots or Alexa, in the device. Testers may need training at an early stage, given the increased need for AI-powered testing solutions. AI and its applications are extremely beneficial with advanced understanding.

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Mohamed Yaseen
Nerd For Tech

Experienced QA Automation Lead with expertise in test automation, frameworks, and tools. Ensures quality software with attention to detail and analytical skills