Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy told investors Thursday not to worry about bots invading its online store and rendering it useless.
Jassy’s comments, made during a call with analysts following the company’s quarterly earnings report, came about a month after the e-commerce giant blocked Meta Platforms’ popular new AI assistant, Muse, from accessing its online store. Amazon said in September that Muse’s access would violate the conditions of use its customers have agreed to.
While not naming Muse, Jassy said few customers are buying with outside shopping agents because the experience is “still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly.”
While Meta has been able to sign up partners that welcome its Muse agent, such as Shopify, Walmart, and Best Buy, Amazon has not joined the group. Muse is a threat to Amazon because it bypasses the usual process of humans visiting its website or app and seeing the advertisements that serve as a key profit driver for the company. Jassy noted Thursday that outside agents were not the cause of the company’s weaker-than-expected advertising performance during its third quarter.
Amazon also has its own shopping agent, “Alexa for shopping,” that it is eager for customers to use.
During the analyst call, Jassy said more than 400 million customers have used Alexa for shopping in the last year, with “customer interactions” growing 570% year over year. He also said that U.S. customers using its shopping agent spend 50% more per order than those who do not use it.
Meta, meanwhile, has seen huge growth for Muse. The AI agent quickly unseated ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple’s App Store, and Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said last week that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada had already set up the Muse assistant since it was released in early September.
The app can plug into calendars, emails, and other phone functions to run tasks autonomously on behalf of users. It is one of several personal assistants that tech companies such as OpenAI have been rolling out in recent months.
Zuckerberg said the most common use case for Muse has been shopping, with more than a quarter of the people using the agent engaging in shopping and the average purchase size topping $200.
“Obviously, not everyone wants to be an early adopter. That’s fine,” Zuckerberg said. “We’ll work with folks on the terms that makes sense for them.”