Question: The rate at which AI tools keep coming up feels like they are going to replace Selenium and other conventional automation tools sooner than we think. But, as of now what are the real life practical limitations of such tools? Can somebody share their project experience?

**EDIT:**

This question is basically asking to address the limitations of AI backed "codeless" automation tools like the one described above when compared to Selenium (or other "codeful" automation tools).

Answer: 
Talking about the general limitations of AI would fit at least a book - given only our current understanding of it. 5 more years and half the book can be re-written.

In summary, to the context software testing in general, I would raise two points:

1 - **AI system do not learn as humans do**. AI systems are algorithms - they are data-driven, which allow more flexibility than path/logical-expressions driven algorithms. They do somethings better than humans: Finding patterns in a large dataset and classifying new data, for instance. But they cannot put in context the subjective aspects of human behavior - one needs to encode it somehow, so the AI system can use this data; this is transforming subjective into objective - thus, losing information in the process.

2 - Projects have a life-time: A project is implemented in a certain time-frame. Therefore, it would bound to the tools available of the time, or that can be efficiently built during this time-frame. Therefore, some problems would not be solved by AI for certain projects because the system would not be available of the time.

About Selenium itself, considering the [Lindy Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect), it should be around for some time yet. However, for the same principle, some of these AI tools will surely take some of the marketshare.

Why? Because some things will be better done using them. Other things will be better done using Selenium - probably some tools will use Selenium as helper for some things, instead of re-creating the wheel.

Cobol is around there until today - and probably will still be around for some time.
Comparing Selenium to AI driven testing is not exactly the right way to think about it. But an interesting proposition and question.

Selenium and Cypress and CodedUI and others are simply ways to automate browser tests at the UI level. We all know these are brittle and challenged with modern UI libraries. But they are mature (Selenium is 15 years old now) and function as a language to automate UI actions. When Selenium was introduced it was a godsend. But that was 2004.

I read a study recently that on average 7 selenium scripts can be fully written and debugged per man-day. Of course some take all day to just get one to work...others are faster. But the 1 script an hour rule isn't a bad way to think about any of these languages.

Codeless script generation (ie recording) was tossed out years ago as unreliable and unmaintainable. But a whole new generation popped up in the last few years that changed that (for example Test Designer in Appvance IQ). It generates your test in open-source javascript as the tester uses the application. And self-heals broken accessors at each subsequent run. Data driven of course. We have measured this at 4X - 10X faster than writing selenium scripts. But it depends on the application and skill of the QA engineer. Others have introduced recorders as well with different languages and features (Functionize, Mabel etc). I really suggest you look in to some of these. 

AI test generation was first introduced in 2017. The technology has rapidly progressed to where AIQ can generate 600 scripts per minute unaided by humans. Thats wicked fast. We cannot compare 7 scripts a day to 6000 in 10 minutes.
But how good are these? Are they valid and valuable user flows?

To date we have found that a mix of maybe 10-20 QA designed scripts alongside 5000 or so AI generated scripts provides the right balance of coverage and assurance of very specific user flows. In the end the QA team must report back up the chain that certain items completely work in the current build. Whether or not AI thought it was a valuable exercise to test that flow. So we have found this combination is critical for assurance.

For the dozens of clients using AI test generation daily from us, they indeed have dropped all use of Selenium. That was their own choice over some months. They found that specific cases can be generated faster in AIQ Test Designer (recorder) and self-healed. And the rest of the coverage generated by AI. So that left no place for Selenium.

Since Selenium is so pervasive, someone will still be using it a decade from now. But as AI test generation and advanced new recorders become more commonplace and more reliable, it does seem to squeeze out the need for true manual selenium coding as we have done for the past 15 years.

Of course, Selenium is free. AI isn't. For small dev teams free is a pretty great choice. but for large enterprises with budget, AI driven testing can have a meaningful ROI despite the cost of the technology.

disclaimer - I work for [appvance.ai](https://www.appvance.ai) and I am sharing my own experience helping teams roll out AI driven testing.