Disclosure: we are Fortitude Media and this page describes how our own AI Departments work. It exists because "can I trust it?" is the first question every sensible buyer asks, and it deserves a plain answer rather than reassurance.
Last checked: 20 July 2026.
The short answer
Every Fortitude AI department starts in AI Assisted mode: the AI does the work, drafts the action, and queues it for your one-click approval before anything reaches a customer, a prospect or your website. AI Autopilot is the trusted mode: action types you have explicitly promoted run on their own, exceptions escalate to a named human, and you can demote any action type back to Assisted the same day. Trust is earned per action type, not granted wholesale, and a named human at Fortitude stays accountable for every department in either mode. Nothing about the price changes between modes.
How Assisted mode actually feels
The department does the whole job except the final click. Overnight, your Inbound department answered six enquiries, qualified them, and drafted replies and booking links. At 8:30 you open the queue: six cards, each with the caller's question, the drafted response and the reasoning. Approve, approve, edit one word, approve, approve, escalate one to yourself. Ninety seconds. The department learns from the edit. That is Assisted mode: the labour is gone, the control is not.
The queue is designed for speed without rubber-stamping. Actions come with context, not transcripts to wade through. Anything time-critical notifies you. Anything you sit on past its useful window expires rather than firing late, and the report tells you what expired so silence never masquerades as safety.
What earns Autopilot
After a few weeks the pattern in the queue becomes obvious: you have approved the same action type, unchanged, dozens of times. Booking a meeting into an open slot. Sending the standard pricing reply. Publishing the weekly report. Chasing a quote at day three. These are the candidates. You promote an action type to Autopilot in the dashboard; from then on it runs without waiting, and its outcomes appear in the same weekly report with the same logging.
What never goes to Autopilot by default: anything with money, anything legal, anything to a new contact where tone is untested, anything your Compliance Guardrails lock. And the demotion path matters as much as the promotion: one click moves any action type back to Assisted, effective immediately, no conversation required. Trust that cannot be withdrawn quickly is not trust, it is lock-in.
Who is accountable, precisely
In both modes, three layers. The AI executes and logs. You (or your delegate) own the approval queue and the promotion decisions. And a named human at Fortitude is accountable for the department's outcomes: not "support", a person whose name is on your report, who reads the exceptions, reviews the samples, and answers for the month. If a department underperforms, that person explains why and what changes. If something ships that should not have, the log shows exactly what was approved by whom, and the fix is procedural, not mysterious.
This is also why the pricing is weekly, cancel anytime: accountability with an exit is accountability you can test.
The comparison in one table
| AI Assisted | AI Autopilot | |
|---|---|---|
| Who approves each action | You, one click | Pre-approved by action type |
| Speed to action | Minutes to hours (your queue) | Immediate |
| Exceptions | Escalate to you | Escalate to you, always |
| Logging | Every action, full context | Identical |
| Best for | New departments, sensitive actions, regulated work | Proven, repetitive, time-critical actions |
| Price difference | None | None |
| Reversal | n/a | Back to Assisted same day, one click |
When to switch, and when not to
Switch an action type to Autopilot when three things are true: you have approved it repeatedly without edits, its failure mode is cheap (a slightly imperfect chase email, not a mispriced quote), and speed adds value (callbacks in about a minute win deals that callbacks in four hours lose). Keep an action type in Assisted permanently when its failure mode is expensive or public: pricing, claims about your product, anything regulated, anything to the press. Plenty of mature departments run at sixty or seventy per cent Autopilot forever, with the sensitive third deliberately human-gated. That is not a failure of AI adoption. That is what good judgement looks like.
If you operate in a regulated sector, Compliance Guardrails formalise this: chosen action types are locked to Assisted, sector rules are checked before anything queues, and the audit trail is built for your compliance officer rather than for us.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between AI Assisted and AI Autopilot?
In AI Assisted mode the AI does the work but every outbound action queues for one-click human approval before it happens. In AI Autopilot, action types you have explicitly promoted run without waiting, with exceptions still escalating to a human. Assisted is the default for every new Fortitude department; Autopilot is earned per action type and reversible the same day.
Can the AI act without approval?
Only for action types you have personally promoted to Autopilot, and never for exceptions, which always escalate to a human in both modes. Nothing starts in Autopilot. Regulated firms can additionally lock chosen action types to Assisted permanently with Compliance Guardrails.
Who is accountable if the AI gets something wrong?
A named human at Fortitude is accountable for every department's outcomes in both modes, and every action is logged with what was done, when, why, and who or what approved it. If something ships that should not have, the log shows exactly where the decision was made and the fix is procedural. You also keep a same-day demotion path back to Assisted for any action type.
Does Autopilot cost more than Assisted?
No. The price of a department is the same in either mode, £115 to £249 a week depending on the department, billed monthly, cancel anytime. The modes exist to manage trust, not to tier the pricing.
How long until a department can run on Autopilot?
Typically a few weeks per action type: enough approvals for the pattern to be boringly consistent. Most departments end up hybrid, with routine actions on Autopilot and sensitive ones deliberately kept in Assisted. Speed of promotion is your call entirely; we never switch a type without you.