When I do ask, it's because I want responses from the people I follow (and that follow me) - trusted contacts whose opinions I am interested in. I don't want to opt in to a brand new spam feed every time I tweet.
If I write "I'm finding $productA obnoxious because of $foo; any suggestions for a replacement?", and I get an automated tweet about $productB that shows no signs of actually solving my problem, then yeah, that's spam.
On the other hand, if I got a human reading my tweet (whether they found it automatically or not) and responding with "You might try our $productB; we've solved $foo by doing ...; see $url", then I wouldn't mind seeing that, because they've actually offered me a solution to the exact problem I was complaining about.
Automate and scale it up with ML / NLP to filter and prioritise who to respond to. Hell why not have the bot throw up potential responses.
Just make sure there's a human at the end of the process and really engage.
"Trying to have a private conversation with friends? Have some advertising shoved in your face! Don't like it? GTFO!"
No wonder Twitter is dying.
Anyway, I don't use Twitter much anymore, but have to agree with the OP. If I wanted the opinion of random strangers, I wouldn't go to Twitter, I'd just Google it.
When it comes to communications technology, what is possible is not the same thing as what is acceptable--or welcome.
Twitter is one of those environments where there isn't a public/private binary - much like interacting with people in real life. If I'm sat at a bar talking to friends, there are some situations in which the intervention of a stranger would be appreciated, but it's few and far between. And if they're a salesperson? Forget it.