ServiceNow used its annual Knowledge 2026 conference in Las Vegas this week to announce a significant expansion of its AI governance and autonomous workforce capabilities, positioning itself firmly as what it calls "the AI control tower for business reinvention".
The announcements centre on three interconnected developments: a broadened AI Control Tower, the introduction of ServiceNow Otto, and a new generation of AI specialists designed to serve every major business function, including customer relationship management.
The Governance Gap
The AI Control Tower expansion addresses a problem that has grown alongside enterprise AI adoption: accountability. Jon Sigler, executive vice president and general manager of AI Platform at ServiceNow, said that enterprises face "real pressure to deploy AI and show results, but there's a major gap between adoption and accountability".
The updated Control Tower is designed to close that gap. New capabilities give enterprises control over every AI system, agent, and workflow, regardless of where it runs. For CX leaders still working out what AI governance requires at an organisational level, ServiceNow's pitch is that the platform handles the enforcement layer: a new AI Gateway adds real-time controls for agentic workloads handling Model Context Protocol transactions, providing security and observability across third-party AI systems. The Control Tower enhancements are expected to enter ServiceNow's Innovation Lab in May and reach general availability in August 2026.
Otto: One Interface for the Whole Enterprise
Alongside the governance update, ServiceNow introduced Otto, a unified AI experience layer aimed at resolving a fragmentation problem that has dogged enterprise AI deployments. Other major software providers ship AI inside their own applications, working in compartmentalised isolation, unable to complete work across departments or systems. Otto has been designed to answer this need. It combines the intelligence of Now Assist, Moveworks, and AI Experience to complete work across every department and system.
The pitch is straightforward. Employees, partners, and customers ask; Otto handles the rest. The experience is governed through AI Control Tower, giving enterprises the audit trails, approval chains, and cross-system workflow support that standalone AI tools have largely failed to provide.
‘An AI Workforce for Every Team’
ServiceNow also announced an extension of its Autonomous Workforce, adding new AI specialists for IT, CRM, employee service, and security and risk teams. These are capable of autonomously resolving cases, containing threats, managing incidents, and handling employee requests. It provides a clear use case for CX and customer service leaders grappling with what agentic AI means for their brands in practice. According to ServiceNow, it unlocks “talented people” to do “the work that moves the business”, such as focusing on strategy, relationships, and risk assessments.
A deepened integration with Microsoft was announced alongside the product updates, a move that fits the trajectory of Microsoft's evolving CX AI strategy. The partnership extends AI Control Tower's existing governance across Azure-backed Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio to the Microsoft Agent 365 AI agent ecosystem. ServiceNow AI specialists will also be made available in the Microsoft Agent 365 Marketplace, broadening the reach of its autonomous workforce into the productivity tools employees already use daily.
Jensen Huang of NVIDIA also joined ServiceNow chairman and CEO Bill McDermott during the opening keynote, with the two companies announcing an expansion of their collaboration to deliver governed autonomous agents to enterprises, from employee desktops to AI factories.
Taken together, the Knowledge 2026 announcements build a clear picture of ServiceNow's strategic positioning, focussing on controls as well as capabilities. For organisations under pressure to demonstrate that their AI deployments are safe, measurable, and genuinely productive, ServiceNow is doing the legwork to justify its deployment.