Meta launched its Muse shopping agent on Sept. 8; Shop Pay became available in Muse on Sept. 23, while Amazon blocked the agent from browsing and buying on its site. The split shows businesses can decide whether AI agents reach their customers.
Muse requires a user’s approval before making a purchase. At launch, it used Stripe’s Link wallet, which generates a one-time card number, while Shop Pay was listed as coming soon. Meta said the agent launched with access to Shopify’s full catalog and named Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair among retailers it is adding.
Amazon said third-party apps should operate openly, respect providers’ decisions and asked Meta to remove Amazon from Muse. Meta says credentials are securely stored beyond the agent’s view, but Muse appears as the user while browsing; Amazon’s terms require agents to identify themselves in every web request. Meta’s WhatsApp terms bar general-purpose AI assistants when Meta deems AI the primary function, with exceptions in some countries. On Aug. 4, the Ninth Circuit said Amazon was unlikely to prove Perplexity’s Comet shopping agent had accessed its computers under federal and California computer-access laws, but left Amazon’s contractual access controls intact.
