Amazon CEO wants to put ads in your Alexa+ conversations

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sees an opportunity to deliver ads to users during their conversations with the company’s AI-powered digital assistant, Alexa+, he said during Amazon’s second-quarter earnings call Thursday.

“People are excited about the devices that they can buy from us that has Alexa+ enabled in it. People do a lot of shopping [with Alexa+]; it’s a delightful shopping experience that will keep getting better,” said Jassy on the call with investors and Wall Street analysts. “I think over time, there will be opportunities, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations, to have advertising play a role to help people find discovery, and also as a lever to drive revenue.”

Amazon says it has rolled out Alexa+ to millions of customers, part of an effort to make its legacy digital assistant capable of agentic behaviors and more natural to talk to. Alexa+ is Amazon’s answer to generative AI voice assistants from OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity that have made legacy systems feel outdated. However, the business models behind generative AI products remain unclear.

Amazon has made Alexa+ free for Prime customers (who pay $14.99 a month) and added a $20-a-month subscription tier for Alexa+ on its own. Jassy suggested on Thursday that Alexa+ could eventually include subscription tiers beyond what’s available today — perhaps an ad-free tier.

Up until now, ads have only appeared in Alexa in limited ways. Users may occasionally see a visual ad on Amazon’s smart display device, the Echo Show, or hear a pre-recorded ad in between songs on one of Alexa’s smart speakers.

But Jassy’s description of an AI-generated ad that Alexa+ delivers in a multistep conversation, which could help users find new products, is uncharted territory for Amazon and the broader tech industry. Marketers have expressed interest in advertising in AI chatbots, and specifically Alexa+, but exactly how remains unclear.

Amazon’s competitors in the AI space seem to think advertising is a promising business model for generative AI, too. Google is exploring how to infuse ads into its AI-powered search experience, AI mode. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he’s open to a “tasteful” form of advertising in ChatGPT.

Amazon is spending a fortune to catch up in the AI race. In the second quarter of 2025, Amazon’s capital expenditures rose to $31.4 billion, up 90% from the same period last year. A large part of that increased spending is to develop Amazon’s in-house AI chips and build out data centers to support AI models. While the revenue of Amazon’s cloud business, AWS, grew 18% in the second quarter, the company likely needs to generate new business to pay for these investments.

Jassy is betting that users will talk to Alexa+ more than Alexa, which could drive more advertising and more shopping on Amazon.com. However, early reviews of Alexa+ have been mixed. Amazon has reportedly struggled to ship some of Alexa+’s more complicated features, and the rollout has been slower than many expected.

There’s a lot to figure out before Amazon puts ads in Alexa+. Like most AI models, Alexa+ is not immune to hallucinations. Before advertisers agree to make Alexa+ a spokesperson for their products, Amazon may have to come up with some ways to ensure that its AI will not offer false advertising for a product.

Jassy seems enthusiastic about making advertising a larger part of Amazon business. Amazon’s advertising revenue went up 22% in the second quarter, compared to the same period last year.

Delivering ads in AI chatbot conversations may also raise privacy concerns. People tend to talk more with AI chatbots compared to deterministic assistants, like the traditional Alexa and Siri products. As a result, generative AI chatbots tend to collect more information on users. Some users might be unsettled by having that information sold to advertisers and having ads appear in their natural language conversations with AI.