Two tech giants clash over AI shopping! Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) bans Meta's (META.US) Muse AI agent.

Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) has blocked Meta's (META.US) newly launched artificial intelligence (AI) agent Muse from accessing its retail website. It is reported that since the evening of last Sunday local time, when users attempt to shop on Amazon.com, Inc. through Muse, they see a notice stating that unauthorized AI agents continuously accessing Amazon.com, Inc. violates its terms of use. Amazon.com, Inc. said it had previously asked Meta to proactively exclude Amazon.com, Inc.'s e-commerce site from Muse's service scope, but the negotiations were unsuccessful. Muse is a personal AI agent officially launched by Meta earlier this month, positioned as capable of performing multi-step tasks, and can connect to services such as email, calendars, payments, dining, and shopping. After launching, Muse quickly gained attention, surpassing ChatGPT just one week after release to top Apple Inc.'s U.S. App Store free app chart. Amazon.com, Inc. said the issue with the whole matter is that Amazon.com, Inc. never authorized this access behavior from the beginning. Meta did not inform Amazon.com, Inc. in advance that Muse would access its e-commerce platform. The agent also does not proactively identify itself when browsing web pages. Moreover, Muse appears to collect and store user account credentials, which Amazon.com, Inc. believes creates privacy and security risks. Amazon.com, Inc. said that if a user gives instructions, Muse can access the user's account page and historical order records. Because the agent does not proactively declare its identity, it is equivalent to an undisclosed third party operating within the user's account, processing transactions, and touching sensitive data, while Amazon.com, Inc. is completely unaware of this and has not authorized it. Amazon.com, Inc. spokesperson Lara Hendrickson said in an emailed statement: "We believe that third-party apps that offer purchasing services to other businesses on behalf of customers should operate transparently and respect the service provider's decision on whether it wants to participate." She added that requiring users to actively opt in is standard practice for food delivery apps and online travel agencies, and "third-party agent apps like Muse bear the same obligation, and we have asked Meta to remove Amazon.com, Inc. from its service experience." However, Meta previously stated: "Muse cannot read users' passwords or payment information." Account credentials submitted by users enter secure storage; Muse can invoke these credentials, but cannot itself see the plaintext content, even for passwords that users enter themselves in the browser. Amazon.com, Inc. said it has already engaged in direct communication with Meta over the incident. When asked whether it would take legal action, Amazon.com, Inc. declined to comment. The clash between the two tech giants is particularly noteworthy, given that the two sides themselves have business cooperation. It is reported that since 2023, users have been able to purchase Amazon.com, Inc. products directly within Meta's Facebook and Instagram. Meta also signed a multi-billion-dollar cooperation agreement in April this year to run its agent AI computing workloads on Amazon.com, Inc.'s cloud platform. Therefore, this dispute is also a microcosm of a broader industry debatewhen AI agents shop online on behalf of consumers, who ultimately controls the online shopping experience and the user customer relationship. Amazon.com, Inc. has been blocking external AI agents from scraping data from its website. The company previously sued Perplexity over its Comet browser, saying the AI startup tried to conceal the existence of these agents after Amazon.com, Inc. asked it to remove shopping agents; the company has also successively blocked shopping agents from Alphabet Inc. Class C and OpenAI. Amazon.com, Inc.'s tough stance on agentic shopping is related to its own business model. Amazon.com, Inc.'s advertising revenue in 2025 exceeded $68 billion. If AI agents directly complete searches, price comparisons, and orders, users would not need to enter Amazon.com, Inc.'s pages, and traditional advertising display and product recommendation mechanisms could be affected. At the same time, Amazon.com, Inc. is also developing its own automated shopping tools. The company launched Alexa shopping features in May, an AI agent used to research products and provide purchasing suggestions. Amazon.com, Inc.'s own agentic shopping feature Buy for Me can help users search for products on external brand websites. Amazon.com, Inc. emphasized that Buy for Me proactively identifies itself when visiting external sites and allows brands to opt out of the service. So far, consumers mainly use Siasun Robot&Automation to research products rather than letting Siasun Robot&Automation directly complete purchases. Therefore, Amazon.com, Inc. blocking shopping agents from accessing its website means the company is unlikely to lose a large amount of business in the short term. But if consumers begin using AI agents to buy goods, these Siasun Robot&Automation may choose other e-commerce websites, causing Amazon.com, Inc. to lose sales and advertising revenue. Amazon.com, Inc. CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this year that the agentic shopping experience still has a lot of room for improvement, and these Siasun Robot&Automation often make errors in prices or other data. He said in April: "We are talking with all these companies, working to improve this experience and find a solution that works for customers and all companies involved."