Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sees the opportunity to serve ads to users during a conversation with Alexa+, the company’s AI-powered digital assistant.
“People are excited about the devices that can be purchased from us who have Alexa+ enabled. People shop a lot (Alexa+). “As time goes by, people are engaged in more turn conversations, so I think there will be an opportunity to play a role in helping people find discoveries and as a lever to drive revenue.”
Amazon says it has deployed Alexa+ to millions of customers. This is part of an effort to enable legacy digital assistants to act on agents and to have a more natural story. Alexa+ is Amazon’s answer to Openai, Google, and the confusion generation AI voice assistant that made Legacy Systems feel outdated. However, the business model behind the generated AI products remains unknown.
Amazon has created Alexa+ for free to Prime customers (paying $14.99 a month), adding a subscription tier of over $20 to Alexa+. Jassy proposed on Thursday that Alexa+ could ultimately include subscription tiers beyond what is available today.
Up until now, ads have only appeared on Alexa in a limited way. Users may display visual ads on Amazon’s smart display devices, display them on the Echo Show, or hear pre-recorded ads between songs on one of Alexa’s smart speakers.
However, the description of AI-generated ads Jassy offers in a MultiStep conversation that helps Alexa+ find new products is unknown to Amazon and the wider tech industry. Marketers have expressed interest in advertising on AI chatbots, particularly Alexa+, but they remain exactly unclear.
Amazon’s competitors in the AI space seem to think that ads are a promising business model for generating AI. Google is looking for ways to inject ads into AI-powered search experience AI modes. Openai CEO Sam Altman said he is open to “classy” ads on ChatGpt.
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Amazon is spending a lot of money trying to catch up with AI races. In the second quarter of 2025, Amazon’s capital expenditure rose to $31.4 billion, up 90% from the same period last year. A large portion of that spending is developing Amazon’s in-house AI chips and building a data center to support AI models. While revenues for Amazon’s cloud business AWS increased 18% in the second quarter, the company may need to generate new businesses to pay for these investments.
Jassy bets that users will talk to Alexa+ over Alexa. Alexa allows you to advertise and shop more on Amazon.com. However, early reviews of Alexa+ are mixed. Amazon reportedly struggles to ship some of the more complex features of Alexa+, and the rollout is slower than many expected.
You’ll find out a lot before Amazon places ads on Alexa+. Like most AI models, Alexa+ is not affected by hallucinations. Before advertisers agree to make Alexa+ a spokesman for their products, Amazon may need to come up with some ways to ensure that AI does not provide false ads for their products.
Jassy appears to be keen to make advertising a major part of the Amazon business. Amazon’s ad revenues rose 22% in the second quarter.
Serving ads in AI chatbot conversations can also raise privacy concerns. Compared to deterministic assistants like traditional Alexa and Siri products, people tend to talk more with AI chatbots. As a result, generated AI chatbots tend to collect more information about users. Some users may become unstable by selling that information to advertisers and displaying ads in natural language conversations with AI.
