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Human-in-the-loop (HITL) automation is when you incorporate humans into automated systems that require a certain level of decision-making to take place. Human oversight or intervention is integrated into fully automated processes and workflows to either oversee, guide, validate or judge certain stages or information during the automation process.

HITL is the interaction between humans and machines, combining the efficiency and consistency of digital workers with the contextual understanding of humans. HITL can involve the use of machine learning models, where humans review and validate the outputs of these models, but it’s important to note that HITL itself is not a machine learning model.

A good example of HITL automation is in customer service. When a customer or user visits your website, you might have a chatbot with some levels of automation attached to it to handle routine inquiries and basic tasks. When these queries become a little more advanced or complex, the chatbot can then involve or even hand the query over to a human for further action.

Another example is invoice processing. With the help of optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent document processing (IDP) technology, digital workers can automatically read and capture information from paper-based invoices. If they get stuck, encounter bad data or illegible text, they can then send these to a human to handle.

There are several reasons why keeping an HITL is beneficial in automation. A few key benefits include:

• Improved efficiency and accuracy: Humans are able to use judgment for decision-making and problem-solving.
• Compliance: Human involvement adds an extra layer to ensure automated processes comply with regulations.
• Flexibility: Human oversight allows for adaptability when complex or unexpected situations arise.
• Continuous improvement: Human input can contribute to the improvement of artificial intelligence (AI) models through a feedback loop.

HITL integrates the expertise of human workers with the efficiency of a digital workforce to achieve stronger and more capable automation solutions.

HITL is currently applied across several industries and functions that benefit from the combination of humans and digital workers together. Some use cases include:

• Customer support: Automation handles the majority of simple cases and humans are involved when there is a complex case or in need of some personalized assistance.
• Quality control: Automation can automatically detect product defects, but humans can be included in the process to review more nuanced issues and verify automation is working correctly and as intended.
• Content moderation: Digital workers work from a list of rules and filters that they can automatically flag up; human moderators can then take over to review and make the final decision.
• Document translation: Digital workers can copy or translate text from one system to another. A human can then review and refine this data if necessary and check for accuracy.

Once you establish that HITL is the best solution for your automation needs, you can set up HITL automation with a workflow that lets your digital workers know when they need to involve a human in the process.

Pick software that has an intuitive, simple-to-use interface to help users design and maintain HITL automations within branding guidelines. Some solutions don’t require such heavy reliance on developers or IT to build these types of automations.