Servicenow Otto

sakshinitnaware · 57m ago

What is ServiceNow Otto?

ServiceNow Otto is ServiceNow’s unified AI experience, announced at Knowledge 2026. It brings together capabilities from Now Assist, Moveworks, and AI Experience to provide users with one AI-powered way to interact with ServiceNow and get work done.

In simple words, Otto is like an AI assistant that understands what you want to achieve and helps you complete the task, instead of simply giving you an answer.

You can think of Otto as an AI layer on top of ServiceNow’s system of action. It can understand a request, use the available business context and data, access relevant skills and agents, trigger workflows, and work with other systems through integrations.

Why Did ServiceNow Introduce Otto?

Before Otto, ServiceNow’s AI capabilities were available through different experiences and products, such as Now Assist, Virtual Agent, AI Agents, Moveworks, and AI Experience.

Each of these capabilities had its own purpose. Depending on what they wanted to achieve, users might have needed to know which AI capability or experience they should use.

This could make the overall AI experience feel fragmented.

Otto brings these experiences together into a more unified AI experience.

Instead of users thinking:

“Should I use Virtual Agent, Now Assist, an AI Agent, or another tool for this?”

They can simply tell Otto what they need.

For example:

“My laptop is not connecting to Wi-Fi. Can you help?”

Or:

“Here is a screenshot of the error I am getting. What should I do?”

Or, where supported:

“My laptop isn't working. Can you help me fix it?”

The user doesn't necessarily need to know which ServiceNow product, workflow, agent, knowledge article, or backend process is responsible for handling the request. Otto can determine the appropriate capabilities and actions behind the scenes.

** Another reason for introducing Otto is to make AI easier to access**

Users may interact with Otto through different experiences and channels, including conversational interfaces, voice, screenshots, and other supported multimodal interactions. The idea is to provide a consistent AI experience regardless of how the user chooses to communicate.

For example, an employee could describe a problem in text, share a screenshot of an error, or use voice. Instead of having separate AI experiences for each type of interaction, Otto provides a common AI layer that can understand the request and determine what needs to happen next.

How is Otto different from a traditional chatbot?

Imagine an employee says:

“My laptop isn't connecting to Wi-Fi. Can you help me?”

- A traditional chatbot might simply provide a knowledge article:

“Please restart your router and check your network settings.”

- An AI assistant could understand the issue, search the knowledge base, and recommend some troubleshooting steps.

- With Otto, the goal is to go a step further and actually help move the request toward resolution.

For example, Otto could:

Understand what the employee is asking.
Identify that the problem is related to Wi-Fi connectivity.
Search relevant knowledge articles.
Use information about the employee and their environment as context.
Determine whether an incident needs to be created.
Create the incident when required.
Automatically populate relevant information.
Route the incident to the appropriate team.
Keep the employee updated about the request.
Continue supporting the workflow until the issue is resolved.

So, the key idea behind Otto is:

Instead of only answering questions, AI can help users actually get the work done.

Where can users interact with Otto?

Otto is designed to be available across the places where users already work. Depending on the implementation and channel, users can interact with it through experiences such as:

Virtual Agent
Employee-facing experiences
Fulfiller workspaces
Microsoft Teams
Slack
Google Chat
Other supported conversational and multimodal experiences(images, forms, screenshots)

This means users don't necessarily have to open ServiceNow every time they need help. They can interact with the AI from the tools they already use.

Otto can also work with different types of input, including text, voice, images, forms, and screenshots, depending on the experience and channel being used.

What about governance and control?

This is where ServiceNow's AI Control Tower becomes important. It provides centralized governance and oversight for AI capabilities, helping organizations manage AI usage, policies, security, risk, and visibility across their AI environment.

This is important because enterprise AI shouldn't simply operate without controls. Organizations need to understand what AI is doing, what it is allowed to access, and how AI-related activities are governed.

So, the idea is not to have AI working independently outside the organization's processes. Instead, AI operates within the organization's existing security, governance, data, and workflow structure.

Is Otto Just a New Name for Now Assist?

Short answer: Not exactly.

This is one of the most important things to understand about Otto.

At first glance, Otto may look like a rebranding of Now Assist, because several existing Now Assist products and applications have been renamed or are now presented under the ServiceNow Otto brand.

However, Otto is intended to be broader than Now Assist.

ServiceNow describes Otto as a unified AI experience that brings together capabilities from Now Assist, Moveworks, and AI Experience.

A simple way to understand the difference is:

Now Assist = a set of AI capabilities within ServiceNow.

Otto = a broader, unified AI experience that brings together different AI capabilities, agents, skills, workflows, data, and experiences.

So, it would not be accurate to say:

“ServiceNow just renamed Now Assist to Otto.”

A better way to look at it is:

“ServiceNow is building Otto as the broader AI experience, while many existing Now Assist capabilities are becoming part of that Otto experience.”

Where can ServiceNow Otto be used?

You can use Otto-related capabilities across many ServiceNow areas:

ServiceNow area	Example use of Otto
ITSM	Incident summarization, investigation, categorization, resolution assistance
CSM	Customer/case summarization, case investigation, customer communication
HRSD	Employee questions, HR case assistance, HR knowledge
ITOM	Alert/event investigation and troubleshooting
SecOps	Security incident investigation

Knowledge	Find and summarize relevant information
Employee Center	Natural-language employee assistance
Service Operations Workspace	Assist agents while they work on records
Customer Service Workspace	Assist customer service agents

The exact capabilities available depend on your ServiceNow release, products, licensing and activated AI features.

Otto's value to an organization

The benefits can be grouped into five categories.

Productivity

Reduce repetitive manual work.

Faster resolution

AI can investigate and summarize information faster.

Better user experience

Users can communicate naturally rather than navigate complex applications.

Automation

AI can initiate and execute workflows.

Consistency

AI can follow predefined organizational context, policies and workflows.

The simple way to think about Otto

You can think of the evolution like this:

Traditional chatbot → “Here is some information.”

AI assistant → “Here is what you should do.”

Otto → “I understand what you need, and I can help take the necessary actions to get it done.”

That is what makes Otto more than just another chatbot. It is intended to provide a single AI experience that can understand requests, use business context, connect different capabilities, and help complete work across ServiceNow and other enterprise systems.