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3 weeks ago - edited Friday
What's changing?
Beginning July 9, 2026, ServiceNow will begin rolling out third-party model providers as the default for out-of-the-box (OOTB) Now Assist skills and AI agents. The rollout is tied to individual store app release schedules, different products will make the switch at different times as their updates are released. If you've already configured a model provider, your configuration is preserved. Most admins won't need to take any action.
If you are a ServiceNow Isolated Markets or Self-Hosted/On-Prem customer, please see the "Customers in air-gapped, self-hosted, and regulated environments" section.
In this article:
✓ Why ServiceNow is making this change
✓ What changes and when
✓ What you need to do — by scenario
✓ What stays the same
✓ Customers in air-gapped, self-hosted, and regulated environments
✓ Where to go for more detail
The AI landscape moves fast. Frontier models from Azure OpenAI, AWS Claude, and Google Gemini release capability improvements in reasoning, language understanding, and task completion, at a pace that directly benefits your Now Assist skills and AI agents. ServiceNow manages that model lifecycle for you.
When a new model version becomes available, ServiceNow evaluates it against OOTB skills and agents before making it the default, so your teams get the benefit of continuous improvement without having to manage the underlying infrastructure or model versions themselves.
By making these providers the default, ServiceNow gives you access to that cadence of improvement as a standard part of the platform, not something you have to configure or pursue separately.
Validated before the switch
ServiceNow product teams test and validate OOTB skills against the assigned third-party provider before any default changes. The provider for each skill is selected based on validated performance against that skill's use case, not an arbitrary assignment.
There are two separate events to be aware of. They're related, but they happen on different timelines and affect different configurations.
Starting July 9, OOTB Now Assist skills and AI agents where the default model provider hasn't been changed will switch to a third-party provider when you apply your product's store app updates. This rollout is tied to individual store app release schedules, so different Now Assist products will make the switch at different times. July 9 is when the rollout begins, not a single simultaneous cut-over across all products.
To see which provider has been assigned to your skills and agents after applying a store app update, check the AI Control Tower Impact Summary under Controls > AI Model Providers or the Now Assist Admin Console > Settings > Manage Model Providers.
Third-party providers aren't new
Azure OpenAI, AWS Claude, and Google Gemini have been available and fully supported on the ServiceNow AI Platform for several releases. What's changing on July 9 is that OOTB defaults will switch automatically when you take the store app update, not that third-party providers are new.
Start here — regardless of your configuration
Before taking any store app update, review your allowed model providers in AI Control Tower. By default all providers are available, but if your organization has restricted specific providers, skills and agents assigned to a restricted provider won't function after the switch. For example, if your instance restricts AWS Claude and the new OOTB default for a skill is AWS Claude, that skill will be blocked by your own policy if fallback is disabled until you update your allowed providers or change the assigned provider.
Review your allowed providers under Configurations > Controls > AI Model Providers in AI Control Tower. Use the impact summary to see which skills and agents would be affected before you update.
Once you've reviewed your allowed providers, find your configuration scenario below.
An instance-level configuration applies to all Now Assist skills and agents on your instance, so your OOTB defaults are already fully covered. The July 9 store app updates won't overwrite that configuration.
If you've set the Now LLM Service as your instance level model provider, we recommend starting the process of getting at least one third-party model provider approved in your organization, performing testing, and setting your instance level model provider to the approved third-party model provider.
Configurations set at the skill, skill group, or agent level are preserved when you take the store app updates. However, any skills or agents that don't have an explicit configuration, and are still running OOTB default of Now LLM Service will switch to the new third-party defaults when you update.
If any of your explicitly configured skills, skill groups, or agents are set to Now LLM Service, we recommend starting the process of getting at least one third-party model provider approved in your organization, performing testing, and updating those configurations to an approved ServiceNow-integrated third-party provider.
You can review the OOTB defaults that have changed (not explicitly set) in Now Assist Admin Console under Settings > Manage AI Models > Manage Model Providers. The Model Providers tab shows provider assignments at the skill and skill group level, so you can identify which skills changed providers after you performed the store app updates in sub-production.
AI Stewards can also review default changes in AI Control Tower > Controls > AI Model Providers > Impact Summary.
For skills or agents that will switch, confirm the new OOTB default provider is on your allowed list in AI Control Tower. If it isn't, either add it to your allowed providers or set an explicit allowed third-party provider for those skills.
All OOTB skills and agents will switch to a third-party provider when you apply each product's store app update. No action is required to make the switch happen, after you update in sub-production, confirm that the new OOTB default provider for each skill is on your allowed list in AI Control Tower, or configure the skills to use an allowed third-party model provider.
After applying the update, verify the assigned providers in AI Control Tower under Configurations > Controls > AI Model Providers, or in Now Assist Admin Console under Settings > Manage AI Models > Manage Model Providers.
Explicitly configured providers are preserved — the July 9 store app updates won't overwrite them. Now is the right time to begin planning your migration to a supported third-party provider.
Review your Now LLM Service configurations in Now Assist Admin Console under Settings > Manage AI Models > Manage Model Providers to understand the scope of what needs to move. Starting your migration planning early gives you more time to retest custom skills and validate prompt performance against the new provider.
For current versioning and lifecycle information, see the model status table in the Now Assist Model Lifecycle KB article →
Custom skill configurations are preserved by the July 9 store app updates, nothing is overwritten automatically. We do recommend starting to test and migrate custom skills to one of our ServiceNow-integrated third-party providers as soon as reasonably possible.
Start now by reviewing your custom skills in Now Assist Skill Kit and identifying which are built on Now LLM Service. For each, clone the prompt and configure it to use a third-party provider, then run human and automated evaluations to compare output quality.
Start migrating custom skills to ServiceNow-integrated third-party providers
Prompt tuning across a different model provider takes time. For step-by-step guidance on updating prompts for custom skills, running evaluations, and publishing updated skills, see the Now Assist Model Lifecycle KB article →
- AI Control Tower — AI Model Providers →
Review allowed providers, view the impact summary, and manage provider policies across your instance. - Now Assist Admin Console — Select a model provider →
Configure model providers at the instance, skill group, and skill level. Review the Model Providers tab for current assignments across skills and skill groups. - Exploring large language models on the ServiceNow AI Platform →
Overview of available model providers, model types, and how provider selection works across the platform.
The governance and data protections you rely on today apply regardless of which model provider is powering your skills and agents.
- AI Control Tower continues to give you visibility into model usage, performance, and policy enforcement across your instance, including which providers are active and where.
- Data protections are maintained by ServiceNow across all integrated providers. You don't need separate contracts with Microsoft Azure OpenAI, AWS, or Google to use these providers through the ServiceNow AI Platform.
- Your existing out-of-the-box skills and workflows don't need to be rebuilt. You don't need to re-engineer out-of-the-box prompts or modify agentic workflows to make this transition.
- Assist utilization and billing are unaffected. The new default models consume Assists at the same rate as the previous defaults.
- Your ability to configure providers remains exactly as it is today, at the instance, skill group, or skill level through Now Assist Admin Console, with AI Control Tower governing what's allowed.
This article describes changes for commercial deployments where connectivity to ServiceNow-integrated third-party providers is available. If your deployment falls into one of the following categories, this transition doesn't apply to you at this time.
- Air-gapped or isolated environments — where third-party provider connectivity isn't available
- Self-hosted deployments — where third-party provider access is not part of the deployment model
- Regulated or sovereign markets — where data residency requirements limit third-party provider availability. SPP-EU customers utilize the same regional deployments as Commercial EMEA customers, and can expect the changes to occur in tandem with Commercial customers.
What to expect
You can continue using Now LLM Service for your generative AI skills and agents. ServiceNow is developing an open-weights hosted model package for these deployment types and will communicate availability and migration guidance separately when it's ready. No action is required at this time.
Your operational reference for everything related to model versions, upgrades, and lifecycle. It covers:
- The current model status table: all providers, models, release dates, deprecation targets, and retirement targets
- How to check which model your skills and agents are currently using
- How to access upgrade models before a scheduled retirement date
- How to validate that your instance has been upgraded successfully
- Step-by-step guidance for retesting and re-tuning custom skills after a model switch
- What to do if you notice a quality change after an upgrade
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Ahead of installing to check, is there any docs that shows the new default model providers by skill please?
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What is going to be the default model from all of the available, which ServiceNow is going to default to?
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@dimitarstan in the section about why they're making the change, it says, "The provider for each skill is selected based on validated performance against that skill's use case, not an arbitrary assignment." I interpret that to mean the default will vary based on what they believe will work best for each specific use case.
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Will the change of the default LLM impact how the Now Assist in VA bot works or the results from AI search?
