Does modern software testing need a new category between exploratory testing and test automation?

For years I've seen teams perform the same activity: A feature is implemented. Before anyone creates a maintainable automation suite, developers and testers spend time exploring the system. Sometimes manually. Sometimes using fuzzers, mutation tools, schema generators, protocol analyzers, API scanners, AI-assisted tools, or other forms of generated testing. The goal is not regression protection. The goal is discovery.

Hundreds of tests may be generated and executed. Many are never maintained. Some reveal defects. A few become future regression tests. Yet we usually classify this activity as either exploratory testing or test automation, even though it doesn't fully fit either category.

I recently published a white paper proposing the term Automation Before Automation (ABA) for this intermediate phase: Automation Before Automation (ABA) — the practice of automatically generating and executing exploratory, validation, robustness, and protocol-level tests before creating and maintaining traditional automated test suites.

Full paper: https://qaontime.com/research/automation-before-automation.html

Curious whether others observe the same distinction in practice.