Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy told investors on Thursday not to worry about robots taking over his 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 terms of service accepted by its customers.
Without naming Muse, Jassy said few customers buy from outside sales agents because the experience is “still not great, nor more convenient than coming directly to a retailer.”
While Meta was able to recruit 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 by which humans visit its website or app and see the ads that are a primary 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 sales agent, “Alexa for shopping,” which it very much wants customers to use.
On the analyst call, Jassy said more than 400 million customers used Alexa for shopping over the last year, with “customer interactions” increasing 570% year over year. It also said that U.S. customers who use its buying agent spend 50% more per order than those who don’t use it.
Meta, meanwhile, has seen huge growth for Muse. The AI agent quickly dethroned 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 United States and Canada have already installed the Muse assistant since its release in early September.
The app can connect to calendars, email, and other phone functions to perform tasks autonomously on users’ behalf. It’s one of several personal assistants rolled out by tech companies like OpenAI in recent months.
Zuckerberg said Muse’s most common use case was shopping, with more than a quarter of people using the agent making purchases and the average purchase amount exceeding $200.
“Obviously, not everyone wants to be an early adopter. That’s fine,” Zuckerberg said. “We will work with people on terms that suit them.”
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