Attack of the Clones, ChatGPT Test Data, WebRiverIO BiDi and more TGNS102

Have you seen the new WebDriver IO bidi protocol feature in action? What can Copilot's earliest users teach us about generative AI at work? And how can ChatGPT be used as a test generation tool? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild News show for the week of November 19th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this. But first, are you looking to take your automation project to the next level? Look no further than applitools and the Visual AI Validation Testing platform. Trust me, it is a game changer. They are the leaders in this space. Plus you could try it out for yourself by creating a free account. Now just click on that special link in the first comment down below and see the difference for yourself. First up is an article about Nightwatch JS and this was posted by David Burns and he talked about how Nightwatch JS version 3.30 has just been released or was released last week and the update includes how parallelism works in mobile testing and it also helps remove upper limits for parallelism. This also updates a number of dependencies that Nightwatch JS uses internally, especially Selenium. So you can get the latest goodness from this project, including updates to Selenium Manager. So if you're using NetWatch JS, it's highly recommended that you that you update to the latest version and get it as soon as possible. Also, another popular open source framework released an update as well that I think you're going to get a lot of value from. And this is by Christian Broman who was excited to announce that webdriver IO now harnesses the power of capabilities of the new webdriver by Die. So what does this mean to you? Well, he points to a video that demonstrates using Google Maps as a playground to this innovative feature and video goes over how users can click a button to change the geolocation to anywhere in the world and in this case the pyramids of Giza. This is also achieved through a new emulation command in the browser API which allows users to set specific geolocation coordinates. Users can also alter the color scheme of the website they visit, switching between light and dark modes. I know a lot of people ask how can I automate this feature and even set custom user agents. This means the browser can mimic different devices or operating systems, offering a more tailored browser experience. So this feature, this enhancements to WebDriver IE really helps testers really get the most out of it. And definitely if you haven't tried webdriver IO, I hear a lot of great things about it, definitely check it out and let me know your thoughts and you can find it in that first comment down below. So last week I talked about a cool project that uses AI for Playwright, but it kind of stirred up a little controversy. Someone contacted me later to point me to this next article that goes over something you need to know about if you tried that other project last week. And so in this post Todd McNeil talks about how their project was cloned and then reused without proper attribution. And this is an example of challenges I think many folks in the tech space face. And the team at Zero Step experience the highs and lows of launching this new project, only to see it cloned based on this article within 48 hours. So Zero Step is an AI based library designed to enhance the Playwright test framework which was launched a few weeks ago, which marks a significant step towards a AI assistant testing. If you haven't checked out Zero Step, it is a unique combination of open source JavaScript libraries and a proprietary backend. It uses an AI interpreter to convert plain text prompts and convert them into actual commands for browser automation and testing. And this technology, initially part of their low code testing platform Reflect, was spun out to reach a broader audience of developers. So what happened? Well, just a few days after the launch of Zero Step, the team discovered a Reddit post by a user promoting a project similar to theirs, and this clone that appeared not only replicates the functionality of Zero Step, but it also copied portions of its readme and marketing copy, presenting it as an original creation. As you know, this is problematic and Even though the JavaScript library of zero step is open sourced under the MIT license allowing for legitimate forks and modifications. But Todd and the team believes that this person's intent was not to provide an alternative, but a co opt of Zero Steps project and market it as its own. This raises significant ethical questions about the boundaries of open source licensing and the responsibilities of developers in respecting original creations. They remain committed to involving Zero Step and continue to invite developers to try the innovative solution for AI based testing in Playwright. So thank you Todd for this innovation and if you haven't tried it, definitely check it out in that first comment down below and really up your Playwright tests with AI assisted testing. So after watching the Test Guild new show every Monday morning, the next thing I recommend everyone do to start that week off right is to check out Kristen Giacovone's Monday YouTube automation series. And so Kristen posts this every Monday. This is just one example of one of the posts and she mentioned one of the great benefits of creating a YouTube channel like Monday Morning Automation is that whenever she forgets how to do something, she could refer back to one of her videos. So Kristen Giacavone is also one of the go to experts for test automation. You should follow as well. And if you haven't checked out Monday Morning Automation, I'll have a link for it down below. Definitely check it out. And thank Kristen for all her contributions to the automation community. So one of the AI technologies that I think is helping a lot of testers or automation engineers when they develop their script is copilot. So I found this article by Microsoft, Copilot, that goes over some other key aspects of how it's really changing the landscape of productivity and creativity for developers and testers. So they have a special report they did on how Copilot's early users could teach you about generative AI at work. And some of the key findings was in productivity and efficiency. A staggering 70% of Copilot users reported increased productivity, with 68 noting improved work quality and users experience 29% increase in speed across tasks like searching, writing and summarizing. It's helped security, where copilot users were 44% more accurate in cybersecurity and 26% faster in identifying cyber threats as well. And it also points to the future of work with AI. So based on that last study by Microsoft, what is some examples of how generative AI can can assist testers? Well, I found a article that highlights this key aspect view as well. So I found an example of how this is done with test generation in ChatGPT. So from my past experience as a tester, I often found creating effective test data to be a challenging task. Luckily, Wayne, who's been on the show before he's an expert in testing, recently shared a compelling success story on his blog Post about leveraging AI and specifically ChatGPT for generating test data. He goes into detail how he was developing a tool to detect duplicate failures in test automation, which required test data with similar but not identical content and traditional methods of creating such data, as you probably know, are tedious and time consuming. And this is where he said AI stepped in as a really awesome way to help with this. It's a wayne turn to ChatGPT as a way to help generate the needed test data. And so what happened? While the AI's output was impressively effective and efficient and perfectly met the project's requirements. And he also goes over some key highlights on why AI worked well. So as a tester you're probably always looking for ways to make your software run faster and more efficiently, especially if you deal with performance testing. So I found a great resource on the four kinds of optimizations you should look at. The first one is goes over use a better algorithm and emphasizes the importance of understanding the context of which an algorithm operates. He also goes over how to use a better data structure. He also goes over how to use lower level systems. He discusses the common approach of rewriting code in a lower level language for performance gains. And he also goes on how accepting a good enough solution can be more practical than striving for perfection. So Grafana Labs announced that Assert AI, a technology that promises to help users understand and interact with observability data, was recently acquired by Grafana Labs and is set to enhance Grafana's cloud Vinono asserts AI's technology provides a contextual layer for Prometheus metrics, offering a set of alerts in dashboards for effective root cause analysis and quicker issue resolution and this integration inspected to significantly reduce the meantime to resolution of of complex application of complex application problems so how do you navigate cybersecurity and security testing in the age of AI? Well, I didn't know this, but OWASP actually has a top 10 for large language model applications you definitely should know about and have a link to this PDF. So this resource by OWASP goes into detail on the key vulnerabilities in large language model applications. Okay, for links of everything of value we covered in this news episode, head on over to the links in that first comment and down below. And while you're there, make sure to check out our awesome sponsor applitools free account offer and discover how to take your automation testing to the next level. Leveraging Visual AI so that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe. My mission is help you succeed in creating end to end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.