The Bots Are Ready to Shop But Are the Humans?

Meta’s AI bot Muse told The Daily Upside it’s not fair that Amazon only allows its own AI bot to shop its site and thought banning all bots was a lazy move. But still, Muse refused to shop on the site. 

Amazon has tried to put up a hard wall around its shopping experience over the past year, most recently blocking Muse. Perplexity’s AI agent was also temporarily blocked from Amazon earlier this year. While eBay and Kohl’s also kept out bots to varying degrees, Shopify, Walmart and Best Buy have welcomed third-party agentic commerce.

While Amazon has cited security and privacy concerns as reasons to ban bots, agentic commerce products besides its own could also threaten Amazon’s lucrative ad business — a business built on browsing, not just buying. 

Alexa Shops Alone 

Amazon is expected to make nearly $84 billion this year from advertising sales, much of which will come from merchants paying to boost their products in the search rankings. But paying for a light gray “Sponsored” sticker won’t matter if everyone starts buying products through AI agents, instead of searching and browsing themselves. Besides, Amazon has its own AI offering:

• Amazon launched Alexa for Shopping this spring, replacing Rufus in an overhaul of its AI shopping strategy. Alexa uses a shopper’s data to personalize recommendations, compare products and so on in a separate chat box from the traditional search experience shoppers are used to. 
• If shoppers used Alexa for Shopping more often, Amazon could risk cannibalizing its search-based ad business. Or it could just insert advertised products into Alexa for Shopping, too. 

Waiting in Line: AI shopping hasn’t quite taken off. Take OpenAI, which used to let shoppers check out directly in ChatGPT but pivoted earlier this year to instead let retailers set up dedicated apps and recently launched new agents that could be used to shop called Dots. The switcheroo could be related to reportedly disappointing Walmart sales. If customers start to feel more comfortable letting AI agents swipe their credit cards for groceries and more, Amazon could risk losing business by blocking third-party agents. Rivals meanwhile could’ve already secured their spots in shoppers’ new checkout routines. CEO Andy Jassy said about this time last year that Amazon does expect to partner with outside agents. It could be a waiting game.