Lucas Ochoa and Gautam Bose were hired together out of college at Google Creative Lab, Google’s tech and culture incubator, and spent three and a half years launching products like the AI Test Kitchen, Teachable Machine and Google Pixel Buds Pro. In early 2020, their team was tasked with finding consumer applications of Google’s LaMDA large language model, and they built more than 50 prototypes integrating LaMDA across Google’s apps and services.
While working with LaMDA, Ochoa and Bose say that they came to realize that enterprise automation relies too heavily on outdated tools burdened with licensing fees, and that many of the tools meant for “citizen developers” turn out to be more complex than necessary.
“The industry’s main challenge is integrating the advancements brought by generative AI, essentially finding the most user-friendly automation methods using AI,” Ochoa and Bose told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We have conviction that solving the action side of software automation will be critical to giving future, more sophisticated AI models proper agency to do valuable work.”
Drawing inspiration from robotics techniques that tap large language models like LaMDA to translate instructions into actions, Ochoa and Bose built an AI system — Lasso — designed to translate a video or description into a software automation workflow. Ochoa and Bose eventually left Google to work on Lasso full time, joining Y Combinator’s Winter 2023 batch.
Lasso, which recently rebranded to Automat, can break down a recording of a workflow into step-by-step instructions. Then it can apply AI to interpret the meaning of those instructions — performing actions on a user’s behalf.
Ochoa and Bose claim that Automat can automate essentially any workflow on a PC, from processing insurance claims to streamlining the submission of construction permits and submitting trade licenses. Leveraging AI and integrations with a range of third-party apps, including HubSpot and Salesforce, the platform can parse documents, execute inventory management and even respond to text messages and emails.
Automat comes in two flavors — unattended and attended. The unattended version runs in the cloud and doesn’t require human oversight, while the attended version acts like a “copilot” alongside a user to assist with repetitive tasks.
“Put simply, Automat takes care of repetitive, boring and dull work that prevent businesses from scaling,” Ochoa and Bose said. “We collaborate with executives and engineers that are looking to build efficiencies into their operations or use automation to enable wholly new product offerings.”
Now, Automat isn’t magic. Contrary to what this reporter initially assumed, the platform doesn’t translate videos into automations instantly — or even automatically. Customers have to submit a video or description of the process they want to automate to the Automat team, which takes up to a few days to build the automation.
Image Credit To IR_Stone / Getty Images
Credit To TechCrunch
