Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Shuts Out AI Bots, Calling Them 'Not Great'

Why Jassy is brushing off the bot hype

Third-party AI shopping agents are failing to deliver a smoother experience than basic web browsing, according to Amazon leadership.

Speaking to analysts following Amazon's latest earnings report, Jassy argued that autonomous purchasing tools are solving a problem that does not exist. He pointed out that very few consumers actually turn to automated agents to browse products, because the results remain clumsy and slow compared to navigating an established storefront directly.

The dismissive remarks arrive against a backdrop of rising industry anxiety over whether automated software will disintermediate classic ecommerce. If a bot handles product comparisons, picks the lowest price, and checks out in the background, consumers no longer browse storefronts or click sponsored placements. For a retail giant, that threatens an advertising engine that generated tens of billions of dollars. Amazon has already taken a defensive stance internally, recently warning engineers against AI tokenmaxxing as it carefully calculates the real overhead and return of autonomous systems.

The clash between Meta Muse and Amazon's walled garden

Jassy's critique is not just theoretical; it follows Amazon's outright block of Meta's Muse assistant. Launched in September 2026, Muse raced to the top of the App Store charts, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claiming over 10 million users across the United States and Canada. Retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Shopify embraced the tool, hoping to capture traffic from social platforms.

Amazon took the opposite path, cutting off Muse's access to product pages on grounds that automated querying violated user terms. Beyond the contractual justification, Muse has faced scrutiny from researchers over a zero-day vulnerability touching messaging apps and data audits revealing aggressive tracking. By blocking Meta, Amazon keeps its product catalog and customer behavior inside its own perimeter.

Amazon prefers its own AI on its own terms

While Jassy had little patience for standalone web-crawling bots, Amazon is happy to promote automation when it owns the hardware and the checkout button.

Jassy revealed that more than 400 million customers used Alexa for shopping over the past year. Customer interactions tied to purchasing jumped 570% year-over-year, and US shoppers using Alexa spent 50% more per order than those browsing solely via traditional screens. As long as the AI assistant drives larger baskets inside Amazon's ecosystem, the company embraces the technology. When that assistant comes from an external ad competitor like Meta, however, the digital gates stay firmly closed.

What it means for buyers

Shoppers relying on Meta Muse or similar external shopping agents will have to manually check Amazon for prices, as the retailer shows no signs of opening its catalog to competitor crawlers. Meanwhile, Amazon's native checkout and voice tools through Alexa remain standard across US, UK, and European accounts without extra subscription fees.