Now reporting to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth.
The Australian “Thor” actor appeared on Amazon’s official internal organizational chart Thursday morning, seen by Reuters, with the title of “Chief Heartthrob” for Alexa Devices, the organization that oversees Amazon’s voice assistant.
Hemsworth, 42, was given an Amazon email address and the additional role of Bar Raiser, a high-profile internal designation for corporate employees who helps recruit at the company.
A quote attributed to Hemsworth on the chart read, “When I’m not acting in movies, I enjoy spending time with my family, campaigning for ad meter votes, fighting snakes, wrestling bears, throwing hammers, and a good cinnamon scrub.”
This was a stunt intended to promote the airing of Amazon’s Super Bowl ad highlighting Alexa’s AI capabilities. In the ad, Hemsworth is shown imagining his death at the hands of a sentient Alexa AI, including being crushed by his garage door, drowning in his pool, and wrestling off a bear sent to attack the actor.
Alexa’s voice in the ad finally reassures her that it is a force for good.
Companies spend large sums of money on expensive advertisements during the annual football championship. This year the commercials cost approximately $8 million for 30 seconds of air time. Amazon’s rivals in AI, Anthropic and OpenAI, are also airing Super Bowl ads this year.
To Amazon employees, however, Amazon’s ostentatious actions appeared insensitive in the wake of recent layoffs and the stock price plunge from Thursday’s disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report. The company laid off 16,000 corporate employees last week, including many who worked on Alexa.
The Washington Post, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, began mass layoffs on Wednesday, leaving a third of its staff unemployed.
“It sure fills the hollow feeling of cleaning out my co-worker’s desk and meeting her in the front with her boxes after she was fired last week,” one employee wrote on a social media site used by Amazon employees and seen by Reuters.
“This is less a joke than an insult to the rest of us,” wrote another.
An Amazon spokesperson called it “a fun internal Easter egg as we head into the Big Game this weekend.” He refused to address the employees’ concerns. Hemsworth’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Amazon said this week that its new Alexa+ service running on generative AI will be available to all Prime members. Alexa, which can answer questions and enable voice purchases and some home automation, has been losing money since its debut more than a decade ago. The company is pushing to change that with an expensive AI-enabled revamp of Alexa, culminating in this week’s ad.
On Hemsworth’s profile page, Amazon employees immediately awarded him with badges given for showing certain tendencies outside of regular work, including being a flan enthusiast, a CPR instructor, and proficient in Mandarin. He had collected about 500.
However, Hemsworth was demoted by late Thursday night. He is now reporting to the Head of Devices and Services.
published – February 09, 2026 10:27 am IST