Over the past year, sparkly new buttons have washed across the toolbars of our favorite apps like a technological tsunami. As applications updated on our devices, users witnessed the real-time rollout of AI integration interfaces, confirming the advent of the AI era. These integrations have made AI ubiquitous and are setting the stage for something even bigger in 2025: an era of automation.
Integrations are critical to AI adoption, enabling mass impact. About half of users are late adopters or laggards, unlikely to embrace new technology if it’s not proven valuable or required. By reducing friction through integrations—like adding an AI magic button that taps into ChatGPT's LLM via API without requiring a separate account—users in 2024 have explored and been amazed by AI's proven capabilities.
Examples of these in-app integrations abound, boosting user engagement in programs they have native familiarity with. Tools like Fireflies.ai and Zoom's AI Companion transform meetings by capturing and summarizing notes in real time. Creating visuals through text is now accessible to Photoshop geeks and Canva superfans alike. Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini are integrated across their vast productivity suites, enabling instant pitch outlines, task tracking, and preliminary data analysis.
While flashy text-to-video technologies like OpenAI’s Sora grab headlines, it's these easy-to-use integrations in our everyday tools for everyday tasks that represent the most widely adopted and proven valuable use of AI.
From office workers to large corporations, experimenting with and then adopting AI has become the new norm. Consulting firms now use AI for data insights and strategic ideation. Marketing firms employ AI for mockups and pitch refinements. Half of Fortune 100 companies use AI-powered virtual avatar presenters for onboarding videos.
While most users aren't advanced AI users yet, exploration is ubiquitous, fueling both fear and appetite. In my research and consulting work with communication clients, I repeatedly see a new hunger to use the tools more robustly now that everyone’s had a taste.
After this past year of normalizing, across industries, the interest now lies on how to seize the potential of AI at the next level. The next more powerful phase will be one of AI-powered automation.
From small agencies to multinationals, users are increasingly interested in what AI can do autonomously. Configured properly, AI can routinely perform tasks without human intervention, streamlining processes and boosting efficiency—from automating humanlike customer service responses to creating bespoke marketing campaigns.
Automation tools like Zapier have been around for years, but they've never been as potent as they are now, nor have there ever been as many competitors, like Make and Tray, and n8n.
Imagine you could deploy AI-powered agents to scrape LinkedIn and industry websites for real-time market data on potential clients. The agents cross-reference leads with past success patterns in found in your Gmail threads, then personalize outreach messages using ChatGPT. You set this to repeat daily, activating sophisticated n8n workflows that connect to your SMS system to send texts, your Asana boards to update team leads when you get a bite, and then syncs with your Google Calendar to set meetings.
With the training from a few YouTube tutorials, any business can now make AI-driven automations a reality.
Large firms are already setting up AI-powered automations. Meanwhile, a new field of freelance digital consultancy has emerged. Ambitious startups like Custom AI Studio, led by Devin Kearns, and Cassidy, founded by social media success story Justin Fineberg, are meeting this demand. They leverage an array of platforms to get robots to work on your behalf—not just one agent, but perhaps an agent swarm working in unison.
What was once available only to large corporations is now accessible to boutique agencies willing to explore AI's potential. Because we've seamlessly experimented with AI, both the advantages and dangers have been democratized profoundly. What will be negotiated in the months to come will be how much the risks are worth and how new norms, such as those around disclosure, will be negotiated.
As we move into 2025, we will witness the shift toward a new era in which automation becomes integral across business operations. Perhaps we'll find ourselves clicking those sparkly AI buttons less in the near future—only because the buttons will click themselves for us.
Stephen Lind is an associate professor of clinical business communication at USC’s Marshall School of Business. His teaching encompasses strategic messaging, technology in communication, consulting, and refining speaking and writing skills for business contexts. He received his PhD, with distinction, from Clemson’s transdisciplinary Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design Program.