Braze at Forge 2026: Where Should Human Judgment End and AI Decisioning Begin?

What happens when artificial intelligence moves beyond helping marketers create content and begins making decisions on their behalf?

Recorded at Forge 2026 in Las Vegas, I speak with Astha Malik, Chief Business Officer at Braze, about how AI is changing customer engagement and what marketers should retain control over as more operational work is handed to software.

Astha explains why the long-standing promise of genuine one-to-one personalization has been so difficult to deliver and why she believes AI can finally help brands move beyond broad segments toward individual decisioning. We discuss Decisioning Studio Go, where AI can optimize content, timing, and frequency for different customers, while marketers continue to define the objectives and brand boundaries within which the system operates.

But greater automation creates new questions. If AI can generate more campaigns and messages, does marketing simply become noisier? Astha talks openly about the danger of "AI slop" and why using the same models and tools can make brands increasingly forgettable.

We also discuss Agentic Standards and the idea of AI checking the work of other AI systems before campaigns reach customers. Astha argues that organizations need controls around agents in much the same way they already have quality processes around human teams.

Our conversation also moves beyond marketing into the changing enterprise software interface. Operator Connect allows Braze capabilities to be accessed through environments such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Microsoft Copilot, raising questions about whether employees will increasingly interact with business systems through AI assistants rather than traditional applications.

Finally, we examine how organizations can prove AI is creating measurable value, why some businesses remain trapped in experimentation, and Astha's advice for leaders overwhelmed by the pace of change.

Her recommendation is simple: start experimenting rather than waiting for certainty.

As AI takes on more decision-making and execution, which parts of marketing should remain firmly in human hands? Listen to the conversation and share your thoughts.