Amazon boots Meta's Muse in fight over AI shopping

Driving the news: Amazon has blocked Meta's popular new Muse agent from perusing and buying products on its platform less than two weeks after Muse launched.

• Meta shares, meanwhile, closed up over 11% Monday as Muse rose to the No. 1 spot for free app downloads in Apple's and Google's app stores.

The big picture: Amazon's move suggests that — at least for now — the retailer cares more about the long-term implications of allowing external agents to shop on its platform than it does the revenue it might lose in the short term.

Zoom in: "We think it's fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

• Amazon said it did not realize that Muse was going to access its store — and didn't authorize it to access customer accounts, scrape data or process transactions.
• The company cited concerns over customer security and user experience, and likened its decision to how food delivery and travel-booking apps operate in their industries.
• The Amazon spokesperson added that "agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations."

The intrigue: The pushback comes as Amazon and Meta have partnered in several other areas, including on Meta's use of AWS chips meant to power its agentic efforts.

• Amazon has also worked with Meta in recent years on advertising arrangements, including letting people shop Amazon products from ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta reps did not respond to a request for comment.

State of play: For now, most AI shopping bots are being used to conduct research, not make purchases.

• Only 16% of shoppers are comfortable letting an AI assistant find and purchase products on their behalf, according to Coveo's 2026 Commerce Relevance Report.
• But as customers become more comfortable with the technology, U.S. retail revenue from "AI-mediated search and purchase automation" could reach up to $1 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey estimates.

Between the lines: Amazon — which recently introduced a shopping assistant based on its Alexa technology — has something to lose if people are using external agents instead of its own systems to shop on the platform.

• "That creates a fundamental question for agentic commerce: who owns origination and the customer relationship, and who simply fulfills the transaction?" Chris Jones, managing director at PSE Consulting, tells Axios in an email. "The answer is still very much up for grabs."

Yes, but: Other retailers are striking a cooperative tone with agentic shopping agents.

• Walmart is partnering with Google and OpenAI to "enable the discovery of Walmart products in their agentic shopping interfaces," Walmart Connect senior VP Ryan Mayward said Sept. 9 at a Goldman Sachs conference.
• The company is doing it even as Walmart is developing its own shopping agent called Sparky.
• Target CEO Michael Fiddelke last month touted a 3.5X increase in traffic from external AI platforms over the previous year

The bottom line: AI agents might have a harder time shopping at certain online retailers than you would on your own.

• "There is therefore a potential tension between what consumers say they want — an independent agent working across the market — and what the largest platforms may commercially prefer, which is to retain control of the customer relationship," Jones said.