Amazon Blocks Meta’s Muse AI Agent From Amazon.com Shopping After Meta Rejects Removal Request

Amazon blocks Muse shopping

Amazon blocked access to Meta Platforms Inc.’s Muse on Amazon.com after Meta rejected a request to remove the bot from the experience, and Amazon said the block began Sunday night. Amazon told users that “continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed,” as people tried to use Muse to buy on the site. Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson said in a statement sent by email that “third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of other companies’ customers should operate transparently and respect the service providers’ decisions about whether they want to participate or not.”

Meta launched Muse on September 8 as a general-purpose assistant designed to perform multistep tasks, including shopping, and the dispute centered on whether an AI agent could act inside Amazon’s retail environment. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the block, while Amazon said it was not told in advance that Muse would access its store and did not authorize the activity.

Bloomberg Línea

SourcesGeekWireBloomberg Línea

Identification and credentials dispute

Amazon said Muse does not identify itself when it browses, and Amazon added that it appears to capture and store customer credentials and scrapes account data. Amazon argued that the agentic model could bypass the personalization built into Amazon’s shopping experience, potentially showing users products that do not reflect their history or recommendations. Meta’s launch materials said Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods,” and Meta said credentials are stored securely so Muse can use them without seeing them.

Meta also described a separate system called Sentinel that approves anything Muse sends to the internet, and GeekWire reported that Sentinel has to approve anything Muse sends to the internet. Amazon’s stance framed the issue as consent and transparency, while Meta described controls designed to keep credentials isolated and to prompt approval before sensitive actions like making a purchase.

Business Insider

SourcesBusiness InsiderGeekWire

What comes next for agents

Amazon positioned its block as part of a broader effort to restrict third-party shopping agents, and it said it was in direct conversation with Meta about the issue while declining to comment on whether it would take legal action.

Amazon’s dispute with agentic commerce also connects to its earlier legal fight over Perplexity’s Comet browser, after Amazon sued Perplexity and sought to prevent rival purchasing agents from browsing and purchasing from its catalog.

GeekWire reported that Amazon won a preliminary injunction against Perplexity in March, then lost it on Aug. 4 when the Ninth Circuit ruled that the user, not the AI company, was the one accessing Amazon’s computers under federal anti-hacking law.

The standoff raised commercial stakes for Amazon’s advertising business, because Bloomberg Línea reported that Amazon’s decision to block purchasing agents means the company is unlikely to lose much business volume unless consumers start using AI agents to buy items.

Meta’s Muse, which reached the No. 1 free app in Apple’s U.S. App Store within a week, now faces a concrete condition for agented commerce on Amazon.com: Amazon’s Terms of Use and service-provider participation decisions.

SourcesGeekWireBloomberg Línea