The Rise of Agentic Testing: What Changes, What Stays & What’s Next | Naveen Khunteta

Will AI replace QA engineers, or will it change what makes them valuable? In this keynote from Elevate QA Tech Summit 2026, Naveen Khunteta explores the rise of agentic testing and what it means for software testers, automation engineers, and SDETs. Titled “The Rise of Agentic Testing: What Changes. What Stays. And Where QA Engineers Must Evolve,” this session examines how autonomous testing agents plan, execute, observe, and adapt, and why strong engineering fundamentals remain essential in an AI-driven testing landscape. From AI-generated test code to debugging complex failures, Naveen explains where agentic testing changes the workflow, where human judgment remains critical, and how QA professionals can evolve their skills without abandoning the fundamentals. WHAT YOU WILL LEARN • Understanding Agentic Testing: How autonomous agents perceive applications, plan test actions, execute them, and evaluate results. • The Reality of AI-Generated Tests: Why generated code still needs engineering review, reliable selectors, assertions, and cost control. • What Changes for QA Engineers: How the role expands to include test strategy, risk prioritization, agent guidance, and reviewing generated code. • What Stays Essential: Why test design, debugging, test data management, asynchronous behaviour, and framework fundamentals still matter. • Debugging Agentic Tests: How to investigate failures across application code, APIs, authentication, databases, infrastructure, and other interconnected systems. • Evaluating AI-Generated Tests: How to assess correctness, business relevance, stability, and execution cost. • The AI Coach Toolkit: Why effective agent engineering requires structured prompts, relevant context, guardrails, and reusable skills. • Building Your Next Skill Set: Practical steps for combining traditional automation expertise with AI tools, testing agents, and Model Context Protocol (MCP). THE CENTRAL TAKEAWAY You can automate tests. You cannot automate common sense. AI can accelerate test creation, but engineers must still determine what matters, validate the results, investigate complex failures, and take responsibility for quality. ABOUT THE SPEAKER Naveen Khunteta is the Founder and CEO of Naveen Automation Labs FZCO, based in Dubai. A QA engineer, trainer, and technology educator, he shares software testing and automation knowledge through his YouTube channel and other platforms. He is also building ShapeMyInterview, an AI mock-interview platform for QA and SDET professionals. ABOUT ELEVATE QA TECH SUMMIT Elevate QA Tech Summit is a Quality Engineering community platform powered by SDET Tech, bringing together practitioners and industry experts to exchange ideas, explore emerging technologies, and advance the practice of software quality engineering. This keynote was delivered at the 3rd Edition of Elevate QA Tech Summit on 8 August 2026 at Crowne Plaza, Mayur Vihar, New Delhi. The summit theme was: AI-Led Quality Engineering: The Proof of Value CONNECT WITH NAVEEN KHUNTETA YouTube:    / @naveenautomationlabs   LinkedIn:   / naveenkhunteta   Website: https://naveenautomationlabs.com/ Explore his tools and resources: • LocatorLabs: https://locator-labs.com/ • QA Daily: https://qadaily.dev/ • GoRest: https://gorest.in/ • ShapeMyInterview: https://shapemyinterview.com/ Subscribe to Elevate QA for more expert keynotes, practitioner perspectives, and technical sessions exploring the future of Quality Engineering. #ElevateQA #AgenticTesting #QualityEngineering"