AI has made the first hour of test automation dramatically cheaper.
Describe a workflow, paste a requirement, or point an agent at an application, and it can produce a respectable first draft. The code may include page objects, fixtures, assertions, and comments. It looks like progress because it is progress.
But creation was never the full cost.
The expensive part begins after the test joins the repository.
Now the team must decide whether the assertions are meaningful, whether the selectors are durable, whether the data is safe, whether the test fails for the right reasons, and who will fix it six months later when the interface changes.
