AI automation that cannot make things up.
Every system we build answers only from your own material and the answers you have confirmed. Ask it something outside that and it says so and hands over to a person, rather than producing something plausible and wrong.
Built in Cornwall, for UK businesses. Fixed price, roughly four weeks, you own the code.
Autaimate builds AI automation for UK small and medium businesses, grounded so it answers only from the business’s own confirmed material rather than generating answers. Ready-made products start at £99 a month; commissioned builds start with a £750 scoping session and run from £8,500, typically live in about four weeks.
Where it actually earns its keep
Four things we have built and shipped, rather than four things it could theoretically do.
Answering customers without inventing anything
An assistant that greets every website visitor, scopes the job in around thirty seconds and captures the enquiry with a name and a number, texted to your phone the moment it lands. It answers only from your own material and the answers you have confirmed — ask it something outside that and it says so and hands over, rather than guessing.
Live at foredesk.co.uk.
Turning speech into finished paperwork
Speak your findings on site and the report writes itself — structured, standards-referenced, and produced as a PDF before you leave. This is where AI earns its keep in trades: the inspection took an hour, the writing-up used to take the evening.
Live at inspectvoice.co.uk, working fully offline.
Reading documents so a person does not have to
Extracting structured information from the unstructured material a business already receives — supplier emails, spec sheets, handwritten job notes, scanned certificates. The task is repetitive and rules-based, which is exactly where this technology is reliable.
Built into commissioned work rather than sold separately.
A system that runs an entire sales conversation
For a business whose product needs explaining before it can be sold: an assistant that knows the range inside out, qualifies the enquiry, takes the sale and books the customer onto training or events — in one conversation, grounded in your own material so it cannot invent specifications or pricing.
Currently in build for a UK manufacturer.
How it stays right after day one
Most systems are loaded with your information once, at set-up, and run on it forever — so they are at their most accurate on day one and drift from there without anyone noticing. Ours are built the other way round.
It notices what it does not know
A visitor asks something your material does not cover. The system says so plainly and hands the enquiry to a person rather than guessing — and it records the gap instead of letting it disappear.
You answer it once, in your own words
You get a short prompt on your phone. Speak the answer the way you would say it to a customer. It becomes part of what the system knows, in your wording, dated and attributed to you.
Every answer carries a shelf life
A price needs checking far more often than the year you were established. Each fact gets a review interval matched to how fast that kind of thing actually changes, so you are asked about what moves and left alone about what does not.
Silence retires the answer
When a fact falls due you get a text. Reply and it is confirmed with today’s date. Ignore it and the system stops using that answer altogether. It would rather say nothing than repeat something that has quietly gone out of date.
What we will tell you straight
There is a great deal of nonsense sold under this heading. Four things worth knowing before you commission anything from anyone.
It will not replace judgement
Pricing a difficult job, handling an unhappy customer, deciding whether to take on a client. These need a person and always will. What the technology removes is the layer underneath — the retyping, the chasing, the writing-up.
Ungrounded AI is a liability, not a feature
A system that generates plausible answers from general knowledge will eventually quote a price you do not charge or promise a service you do not offer. That is not a hypothetical risk; it is the default behaviour unless the system is deliberately built to refuse. Every build we ship answers only from the business’s own material.
Most of the value is not the model
The interesting engineering is almost never the AI call. It is what happens around it — how the material is stored, how gaps get recorded, how answers expire, how an enquiry reaches your phone and gets chased. A demo is easy. A system that stays correct in month eighteen is the actual work.
If a rule would do, we use a rule
Plenty of problems that get pitched as AI are better solved by a calculation, a form or a database query — cheaper to build, faster to run, and impossible to get creatively wrong. We reach for the model when the input is genuinely unstructured, not because it sells better.
Based in Cornwall, working across the county and the UK
Autaimate is based in St Austell and works with businesses right across Cornwall — Truro, Newquay, Falmouth, Penzance and the far west — as well as the rest of the UK. Most of the work happens remotely, but being here means an in-person scoping session is straightforward when it helps, and for a build that has to fit how a business actually operates, sitting in the office and watching the process happen is often worth the drive.
Mick Stevenson spent four decades in UK construction and trades before writing any software. That background is the reason these builds are grounded rather than clever: someone who has been on the tools knows exactly how much damage a confidently wrong answer does when it reaches a customer.
Frequently asked questions
What is AI automation for business? +
Using AI to handle work that is repetitive but not rigidly structured — reading documents, answering questions, turning speech into written records. It differs from ordinary automation in the kind of input it copes with: a rules engine needs a form filled in correctly, whereas these systems can work from a spoken sentence or a supplier email. The judgement about which to use matters more than the technology itself.
How much does AI automation cost for a UK small business? +
Commissions start with a £750 scoping session, then run at a fixed price from £8,500. Some products are sold ready-made instead — Foredesk, our AI front of house, is £99 a month flat with no per-lead fees. Which route is cheaper depends entirely on whether an existing product already fits your job.
Will an AI system make things up about my business? +
Not if it is built correctly, and this is the single most important question to ask any supplier. Our systems answer only from the material you have given them and the answers you have confirmed. Asked something outside that, they say so and hand the enquiry to a person. A system that generates plausible answers from general knowledge will eventually quote a price you do not charge — that is the default behaviour unless it is deliberately built to refuse.
How does the system stay accurate over time? +
Every answer carries the date it was confirmed and a review interval matched to how fast that kind of fact changes. When one falls due you get a short text. Reply and it is confirmed with today’s date. Ignore it and the system stops using that answer rather than repeating something stale. Silence removes an answer; it never approves one.
Do I need AI, or would ordinary automation do? +
Ordinary automation is cheaper, faster and impossible to get creatively wrong, so it is the right answer whenever the input is structured. AI earns its place when the input is not — speech, free text, scanned documents, an enquiry phrased however the customer felt like phrasing it. We will tell you which applies at the scoping session.
Will it replace my staff? +
It removes the part of the job nobody wanted. In every build we have shipped, the system handles the repetitive layer and the person handles the work that needed a person. The realistic outcome is the same team taking on more work without more admin.
Where is the data processed and stored? +
On UK and EU infrastructure, with encryption in transit and at rest, row-level security on every tenant table, and audit logging on every state-changing operation. UK data residency is available on request for regulated sectors. Your material is not used to train anybody else’s model.
Is this GDPR compliant? +
Compliance is built in from the first commit rather than bolted on. Encryption at rest for special-category data, audit trails, data export and erasure on request, and uniform responses on delete endpoints so records cannot be enumerated. For regulated sectors we document the security posture of each build.
How long does an AI automation build take? +
Typically about four weeks from kick-off to a live system, same as any other commission. Ready-made products like Foredesk are set up for you and added to your existing website, with nothing for you to install or configure.
Do you work with businesses in Cornwall? +
Yes — Autaimate is based in St Austell and works with businesses right across Cornwall, from Truro and Newquay to Falmouth, Penzance and the far west, as well as the rest of the UK. Most of the work happens remotely, but being here means an in-person scoping session is straightforward when it helps.
Can it answer on WhatsApp as well as my website? +
Yes. Our front-of-house builds answer on WhatsApp from the same material under the same rules, with your business getting its own number. A missed phone call can also trigger a text back within seconds, so the enquiry carries on in writing instead of ringing out.
How do I get started? +
Book a scoping session and bring the problem rather than a solution. If an existing product already solves it, we will point you at that instead of quoting for a build.
Bring the problem. We will tell you if AI is the wrong tool.
Plenty of jobs pitched as AI are better solved by a calculation or a form. You will get a straight answer either way.