Dive Brief:
- ServiceNow is adding new capabilities to promote responsible AI practices and strengthen governance controls within the Now Platform, the vendor said Wednesday.
- Expanded Now Assist controls include built-in monitoring and guardrails to manage and mitigate offensive content, security vulnerabilities and sensitive information leakage. Customers will also have greater visibility into adoption, usage and performance metrics of Now Assist.
- “With governance at the core, these new innovations bring more personalized, collaborative, trusted experiences to life across the enterprise,” Jon Sigler, SVP of Platform and AI at ServiceNow said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Governance is key to any AI project, and enterprises have grappled with managing the technology effectively. The latest round of updates to the ServiceNow platform seek to assist enterprises with the common roadblock.
It's not the first time enterprises have contended with the security implications of a new technology, according to CEO Bill McDermott.
“When public cloud solutions came online as the last secular shift in the enterprise, they created sprawling governance challenges,” McDermott said during ServiceNow’s Q3 2024 earnings report in October. “CIOs, at the direction of their CEOs, were asked to get things under control: the cost, security and integration.”
McDermott said the C-suite is now looking to prevent the problem from spiraling with AI.
ServiceNow had some early wins related to its AI strategy. The Now Assist portfolio is the company’s fastest-growing product line with 44 enterprise customers spending more than $1 million annually, according to McDermott.
Salesforce has also tried to solve enterprises’ governance concerns, bundling tools into two solutions native to the Einstein 1 Platform to ease adoption earlier this year. IBM added a governance toolkit to its watsonx platform, too.
Analysts have warned enterprises that managing governance and security of AI tools can come at a cost. By 2026, Gartner predicts generative AI will cause an enterprise spending increase of more than 15% because of the amount of resources needed to secure and govern it.
The analyst firm thinks the investment will pay off. Gartner expects enterprises that invest in governance and security tools will reach 35% more revenue growth compared to those that defer.
