April 10 (Reuters) - Amazon ( AMZN ) chief executive

Andy Jassy on Thursday justified the company's billions of

dollars in outlays for artificial intelligence development,

saying the investment was necessary to remain competitive.

"If your mission is to make customers' lives better and

easier every day, and you believe every customer experience will

be reinvented by AI, you're going to invest deeply and broadly

in AI," wrote Jassy in his letter to shareholders, an annual

rite of passage for the top boss at the Seattle retailer.

He said substantial capital investment is necessary to

obtain AI chips and build datacenters. "Our customers,

shareholders, and business will be well-served by our investing

aggressively now."

Like rivals, Amazon ( AMZN ) is investing heavily in generative

artificial intelligence, including releasing a variety of

chatbots serving sellers, businesses and consumers. Last month,

after multiple delays and billions of dollars of investment, it

unveiled an AI-infused revamp of its Alexa voice assistant and

has said it will be rolling it out to select users in the coming

weeks.

Amazon ( AMZN ) has invested about $8 billion into AI startup

Anthropic and has incorporated its Claude software into what it

is calling Alexa+.

The letter is aimed at shareholders, but is closely read by

employees, competitors and analysts. As is tradition, Amazon ( AMZN )

included the first shareholder letter from 1997 signed by

founder and chairman Jeff Bezos.