Complementing Robotic Process Automation with Generative Artificial Intelligence (ChatGPT), Case of Robocorp

Generative AI (GAI) is a category of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that focuses on creating intelligent systems capable of generating new content, such as text, images, or music, by learning patterns from existing data. One prominent example of GAI is ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) developed by OpenAI, which can simulate natural language conversations and generate coherent responses. This paper explores the complementarity between Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology and GAI in the context of OpenAI’s GPT 3.5Turbo and GPT4 API, used by Robocorp Company, extending their intelligent automation offering. The case study research was adopted to examine how ChatGPT can be incorporated with RPA solutions. Together with the interviewing sessions, the authors received and analysed secondary materials about the details of the new solution received from the case company. Moreover, feedback on the newly developed solution was collected from a client company. The paper aims also to contribute to the understanding of how GAI and RPA can enhance business efficiency and improve solution performance. Analysing the case study allowed to discover, support, and extend our theoretical contribution to new possibilities between RPA and ChatGPT. The authors also determined future research areas and theoretical gaps in the field of GAI and RPA complementation (enhancing natural language understanding, developing adaptive automation, fostering human-robot collaboration, incorporating cognitive capabilities, enabling explainable AI, and addressing ethical considerations).