Why is Amazon blocking AI shopping agents while Walmart welcomes them?

Amazon blocks Meta's Muse and other AI shopping agents because it wants control over who transacts on its site and how much of its ad-supported shopping experience those agents bypass. Walmart, which has far less advertising revenue at stake, is doing the opposite: building an open Agent Gateway so agents like Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini can shop on its behalf. The split comes down to what each retailer stands to lose.

What happened: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse

Amazon began blocking Meta's Muse AI agent on a Sunday night, with a spokesperson saying the company prohibits other companies from deploying automated tools to shop its site, according to Bloomberg. Shoppers who try to use Muse on Amazon now see a popup stating that continued access by an unauthorised AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, PPC Land reported. The timing stands out: this came just twelve days after Meta launched Muse on September 8, 2026, and days later Meta announced Muse connectors with Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and others at its Connect event, per Presenc.ai.

Muse's launch was not quiet. JPMorgan analysts said it had the potential to become the most widely used consumer AI app since ChatGPT, and Meta's stock jumped more than 11% in a single day on September 21, according to Shoplazza. Muse also reportedly reached 10 million US downloads in 40 days, Shoplazza notes.

Amazon's stated reasons vs. Meta's rebuttal

Amazon says Muse does not identify itself as an AI agent while browsing the site and that it can access customer account information when acting on a user's instructions, TechRepublic reported. Amazon had reportedly asked Meta to exclude its service from Muse, and Meta declined, according to TechSpot.

Meta disputes Amazon's characterisation. Its launch post says Muse has no visibility into passwords or payment methods, with logins going into secure storage the agent can use without seeing them, according to Forbes. Meta also says a separate Sentinel agent reviews Muse's actions before they reach the internet, and that users must approve sensitive actions such as purchases, per TechRepublic. Both sides claim to have built in the safeguards the other says are missing. We cannot verify either claim independently from the notes available, which is itself the limitation worth flagging: this is a dispute between two companies with opposing commercial interests.

Amazon's broader pattern: Perplexity, Google, and the legal battle

Muse is not an isolated case. Amazon also updated its robots.txt file to block new AI agents from Google, and Amazon product pages no longer appear in some AI-powered search results as a result, according to TipRanks. This fits a pattern readers will recognise from other platform moves, much like Reddit's own login wall decisions around AI access, covered in our piece on whether Reddit's login wall cuts AI search engines off.

The clearest test case is Perplexity. Amazon sued Perplexity in November 2025, and on March 10, 2026 a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction blocking its Comet AI browser from scraping the site, after accusing the startup of concealing its AI shopping agents, CNBC reported. Amazon argued Comet disguised itself as a regular Chrome browser session rather than identifying itself transparently, according to GeekWire. Perplexity countered that AI agents bypass the advertising Amazon shows human shoppers, and that protecting ad revenue, not security, was the real motivation, per the same GeekWire report.

The legal picture then flipped. On August 4, 2026, the Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction, ruling that the person at the keyboard, not the company that built the agent, is the party accessing the retailer's computers under US hacking law, according to PPC Land. The court explicitly declined to establish a new legal regime for agentic AI, and it did not restrict Amazon's ability to regulate access through its own terms of service, per Pearl Cohen. So Amazon lost the court case but kept the contractual tool: it can still block agents under its Conditions of Use, which is exactly what it is doing with Muse. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said the company expects to partner with third-party agents over time, but on its own terms, according to Search Engine Journal. Amazon also has its own agentic play: Rufus, its internal AI assistant, is used by 300 million shoppers and drove $12 billion in 2025 sales, per Adweek.

What Walmart announced

On October 21, 2026, Walmart announced Agent Profiles, the Walmart Agent Gateway and new AI agent terms to help customers shop through AI assistants with more transparency, security and control, according to Walmart corporate. The Gateway is built on an open protocol, using MCP, the model context protocol originally created by Anthropic, which lets an AI agent call outside tools in a predictable way (Walmart corporate, TechAIWire). Readers who want the broader context on how this protocol is shaping agentic commerce rules across retailers should see our coverage of the personal agent protocol that Meta, Walmart and Stripe built together.

The Gateway covers Walmart and Sam's Club, and builds on existing partnerships with Meta's Muse plus integrations with ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI apps, according to The AI Insider. It is not a free-for-all though. Walmart's terms state that agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends, and agents cannot add or change payment methods (Walmart corporate, Digital Commerce 360). Walmart's standard returns process will apply even when an agent misbehaves, and non-compliant agents will be blocked, per The AI Insider. Full rollout is targeted for late November, timed to land right before the busiest shopping weeks of the year, according to Startup Fortune.

Why the strategies diverge

The gap in posture tracks a gap in revenue exposure. Amazon's advertising revenue reached $68.6 billion in 2025, up 22% from $56.2 billion in 2024, according to MobiLoud. Walmart's global advertising business, by contrast, made nearly $6.4 billion in its latest fiscal year, roughly a tenth of Amazon's figure, per the same MobiLoud report. Every purchase an AI agent completes on a human's behalf is a purchase that skipped the sponsored listings, the comparison browsing and the ad impressions that fund Amazon's business at a scale Walmart does not have to protect.

Analysts frame Walmart's bet as one of distribution. Walmart is wagering that free distribution through ChatGPT and Gemini, platforms with hundreds of millions of users it did not have to acquire, is worth opening the gate and accepting some loss of control over the shopping experience, according to Startup Fortune.

What this means for brands and shoppers

For shoppers, the practical effect right now is that Muse and similar agents work on Walmart and not on Amazon. For brands, this is another front in a question we have covered repeatedly: which platforms actually drive answers and purchases when AI sits between a shopper and a product page. The dynamic echoes what we have seen with AI engines trusting earned media over paid content, where platforms that control the surface also control what gets surfaced. Brands selling on Walmart may want to check how their listings appear to agentic traffic sooner rather than later, since the Gateway's rollout is timed for peak shopping weeks.

Our view: Amazon's legal win against the Perplexity injunction protects its right to block agents via terms of service, but it does not resolve the underlying tension forever. As more of Muse's 10 million downloads translate into actual purchase intent, Amazon risks looking like the retailer standing in the way of where shoppers want to transact, not the one protecting them.

Verdict

Neither approach is proven yet. Amazon's defensive posture protects a $68.6 billion ad business today but risks ceding agentic shopping share to Walmart if Muse-style agents become shoppers' default way to buy. Walmart's open approach trades some control and a smaller ad base for distribution it did not have to pay for. The honest limitation is that neither strategy has a full shopping season of data behind it: Walmart's rollout is still weeks from completion and Amazon's Muse block is only months old. Agentic commerce is being decided in real time.

Frequently asked questions

Why did Amazon block Meta's Muse specifically?

Amazon says Muse does not identify itself as an AI agent while browsing and can access customer account information, and it had asked Meta to exclude Amazon from Muse's reach before Meta declined and Amazon blocked access (TechRepublic, TechSpot).

Did Amazon win its lawsuit against Perplexity?

Amazon initially won a preliminary injunction against Perplexity's Comet browser in March 2026, but the Ninth Circuit vacated it in August 2026, ruling that the person at the keyboard, not the agent's maker, is the one accessing the site under US hacking law (CNBC, PPC Land).

What is Walmart's Agent Gateway built on?

It runs on MCP, the model context protocol originally created by Anthropic, an open standard that lets AI agents call outside tools in a predictable way, and it covers both Walmart and Sam's Club (Walmart corporate, TechAIWire).

Can AI agents on Walmart change payment details or make unlimited purchases?

No. Walmart's terms state agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends and cannot add or change payment methods, and non-compliant agents will be blocked (Digital Commerce 360, The AI Insider).

Does Amazon plan to allow any AI shopping agents in future?

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said the company expects to partner with third-party agents over time, but on its own terms, suggesting the current blocks are a negotiating position rather than a permanent ban (Search Engine Journal).