Amazon bars Meta’s AI agent from online shopping

Amazon has blocked Muse—the Meta AI assistant, not the band with hits like “Starlight” and “Uprising”—from accessing its e-commerce platform, saying that the app never received permission to browse the site, and that it represents privacy and security risks.

When Meta released its AI agent designed to help with shopping and booking trips earlier this month, it emphasized safety in a statement: “Muse has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods.”

Amazon already has a history of not allowing rival agentic apps into its online aisles:

• Last year, Amazon sued Perplexity, saying that its Comet AI was…accessing the site without permission and posed threats to Amazon’s security systems.
• While an appeals court overturned Amazon’s ban in August, the underlying case is ongoing because of new questions it surfaced about what AI assistants are allowed to do under existing laws.

Bottom line: Amazon likely isn’t losing much money by restricting AI assistants, since consumers mostly use them to research, not shop, according to Bloomberg. But should that change, those agents may head to other e-commerce sites to make purchases.—DL