SAS helps marketers act faster without sacrificing trust with multiple, specialized agents

DALLAS, April 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- SAS INNOVATE --  As AI usage in marketing organizations accelerates exponentially, marketing leaders are increasingly asking how much autonomy AI should have, where human control matters most, and how to move beyond isolated AI features toward systems that measurably improve outcomes. SAS' approach is clear: AI should amplify human expertise, not replace it. To aid with this, SAS today announced the expansion of agentic AI capabilities within SAS Customer Intelligence 360 with specialized AI agents designed to work alongside marketers.

This new generation of purpose-built AI agents will collaborate with users, operate within defined guardrails and deliver value across audiences, journeys, decisioning and execution while transparency, governance and human oversight are maintained.

Why human oversight matters
We are seeing AI systems accelerating rapidly. This means responsible deployment is essential. SAS is focused on agentic AI that:

• Operates within the principles of trustworthy AI.
• Maintains human-in-the-loop control.
• Is embedded directly into real marketing workflows, rather than added as standalone features.

A multi‑agent future for SAS Customer Intelligence 360
Rather than a single, monolithic AI, SAS has developed a multiagent system within SAS Customer Intelligence 360 with each agent specialized, context aware and designed to act on behalf of the marketer while remaining transparent and controllable.

These agents do not replace existing SAS Customer Intelligence 360 capabilities such as audiences, journeys, destinations or marketing decisioning. Instead, they operate across them to retrieve the right objects, make recommendations and accelerate execution under human supervision.

This approach transforms SAS Customer Intelligence 360 from a powerful marketing platform into an intelligent operating system for customer engagement, removing traditional constraints on scale, speed and precision. By shifting from a resource constrained, linear model to one that supports decisions, journeys and campaigns at unprecedented granularity, marketers no longer must choose between relevance and efficiency – they can achieve both.

The SAS 360 Agent: Coordinating intelligence
As additional agents are introduced, coordination becomes critical. The SAS 360 Agent serves as a supervisory layer, managing interactions between specialized agents such as Audience, Journey, Email, Search and Recipes agents. Rather than requiring marketers to navigate multiple tools and interfaces, the SAS 360 Agent orchestrates actions across customer data, marketing AI and journey execution, working alongside users as a collaborative partner.

The Journeys Agent: From idea to execution
The Journeys Agent within SAS Customer Intelligence 360 helps marketers create customer journeys using multi‑modal inputs, including text briefs, images and conversational prompts. The agent retrieves relevant audiences, events and touchpoints, then assembles a journey structure aligned to both best practices and the marketer's intent.

Human-in-the-loop checkpoints are embedded throughout the planning and creation process, ensuring marketers remain in control while significantly reducing build time and complexity. Behind the scenes, the agent generates consistent, production-ready SAS code, helping ensure journeys are accurate and deployable from day one.

"The Journey Agent has strong potential to streamline campaign creation and improve efficiency at scale, particularly when managing complex, multi-market campaigns," said Eleonora Parlatore, Head of Creative Services and Operations at Global Blue. "We see clear opportunities for it to enhance automation and simplify workflows as it continues to evolve."

The Search Agent: Faster answers, less friction
Search Agent enables marketers to ask operational and performance-related questions across the SAS Customer Intelligence 360 environment, starting with tasks and audiences and expanding to additional areas of the solution over time.

Instead of navigating dashboards and menus, users can ask questions and receive contextual answers grounded in their own data, improving usability and efficiency. It's a small shift in interaction, but a big leap in usability.

Agentic AI, delivered the SAS way
SAS enables marketers to act faster without sacrificing trust by delivering AI agents that are:

• Embedded across the full SAS Customer Intelligence 360 experience.
• Designed with human oversight as a first principle.
• Governed, explainable and enterprise ready.

"Agentic AI isn't about handing control to machines," said Mike Blanchard, Vice President, Customer Intelligence at SAS. "It's about creating systems that amplify human expertise, one specialized agent at a time."

Today's announcement was made at SAS Innovate, the company's global data and AI conference, as SAS celebrates 50 years of innovation. This year's event is proudly supported by our partner sponsors, including Microsoft, Intel and AWS.

About SAS
SAS is a global leader in data and AI, helping organizations make confident decisions with AI they can trust. For decades, SAS has set the standard for delivering software that drives meaningful impact, incorporating deep industry expertise, transparency and governance. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.

SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2026 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.

Editorial Contacts:
Angela Lipscomb
angela.lipscomb@sas.com
919-531-2525
sas.com/news

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SOURCE SAS