The use of Asserts and Verify in Selenium WebDriver is crucial for validating web applications or websites during the process of test automation. Hard Asserts are used when a decision needs to be taken regarding "What if the test(s) result in a failure?" If the error (or issue) being encountered is a minor one, you might want the test execution to continue. In case of serious errors, it is better to abort the execution of the test case (or test suite). Hard Asserts are used when you want to halt the execution of the test script (or test method) when the assert condition does not match with the expected result. Soft Asserts, on the other hand, are used when the test script (or test method) need not be halted when the assertion condition does not meet the expected result. Soft Asserts are used in cases where the failure of a test step does not result in the failure of the test scenario. Both Hard Asserts and Soft Asserts provide two options for passing parameters to assert methods, which can include custom messages for displaying error messages when asserts are thrown. Assertions (or Asserts) play an integral role when it comes to Selenium automation testing. They are used to check if the tests have passed or failed by looking into the results of the respective Assert methods. The use of Hard Asserts and Soft Asserts differs in terms of whether they raise exceptions upon failure, with Soft Asserts continuing execution after a test step fails.