BPA is an old category. Most of what it originally described was rigid, rule-based automation: a form submission triggers an email, a status change triggers a task. That kind of automation is genuinely useful and still runs a huge amount of business software today, but it only works when every input arrives in a predictable shape.
Where the "AI" version actually differs
The moment a process involves something a fixed rule cannot handle, a document that does not match a template, an email that needs interpreting, a decision that depends on context, traditional BPA breaks and routes to a human. AI-powered process automation replaces that breakage point with a model that can read the unstructured input, decide what it means, and choose the next step itself, rather than stopping and waiting for a person.
The two are not competitors
Most real deployments blend both: fixed rules for the parts of a process that genuinely never change, and AI-based judgement for the parts that involve reading, interpreting, or deciding. Treating it as an all-or-nothing choice is where projects go wrong. AI Workflow Automation is Kelriva's term for the agentic end of that spectrum specifically, not a replacement for BPA as a whole.