Amazon blocks Muse, Walmart welcomes agents

Meta’s shopping agent Muse signed up more than 10 million users across the US and Canada in its first six weeks, by Meta’s own count on its October 21 earnings call — yet anyone trying to buy through it on Amazon has seen the same message since September 20: “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use.” GeekWire reported that Amazon first asked Meta to pull Amazon out of Muse’s shopping experience; when Meta declined, the wall went up. Thirty-one days into the block, the industry has split in two. Walmart launched Agent Gateway on October 21, handing approved agents a formal way in, and Amazon CEO Jassy told analysts on his October 29 earnings call that outside agents are “still not great,” while claiming more than 400 million customers used Alexa for Shopping over the past 12 months. Two of the world’s largest retailers looked at the same agents and gave opposite answers.

Key points

The block page reads “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use.” Amazon’s stated reasons: Meta never told Amazon, Muse doesn’t identify itself while browsing, and it appears to capture and store user credentials (GeekWire, September 21).
Walmart’s Agent Gateway is an MCP server built on Anthropic’s protocol, live for Walmart and Sam’s Club; Agent Profiles roll out in November — each agent gets a dedicated profile in the buyer’s account with per-transaction approval or a spending cap, no Walmart+ required (TechCrunch, October 21).
Jassy on October 29: 400M+ customers used Alexa for Shopping in 12 months, interactions up 570% year over year, and US users spend 50% more per order than non-users (The Next Web, via Fortune).

Background

Muse is the personal AI agent Meta launched in the US on September 8, running in a secure VM with its own browser and paying through Stripe Link. We have touched this story twice before, always as a background clause: on September 28, Shopify opened its checkout, Shop Pay included, to browser-based agents with Muse among the first partner agents; and on October 13 Shopify dropped its allow-list entirely, letting any agent shop through a buyer’s Shop account. This entry exists because the October facts finally stand on their own: Meta disclosed user numbers, Walmart shipped a platform-level interface, and Amazon’s CEO addressed the standoff from an earnings call.

The block itself has a paper trail. Per Forkast’s timeline, Amazon spent the summer fortifying: order-confirmation emails lost item names in July, and robots.txt grew to block 47 AI crawlers. Amazon sued Perplexity over Comet’s shopping agent in November 2025, won a preliminary injunction in March 2026, and lost it in August when the Ninth Circuit ruled that the user — not Perplexity — was the one accessing Amazon’s computers. Contract and terms-of-service claims are what remain, and the Muse block runs through exactly that door. eBay updated its user agreement in February to bar unauthorized third-party chatbots.

The facts

Three platforms, three treatments of the same agents. What’s verified:

	Amazon	Walmart	Meta (Muse side)
Key date	Block live September 20	Agent Gateway announced October 21	Muse launched September 8
Stance toward agents	Block unless authorized	Approved agents welcome	Seeking retail partners
Identity & credentials	Alleges Muse doesn’t self-identify, stores credentials	Agent profiles can’t touch payment info	Credentials in secure storage; Meta says Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods”
User control	None (flat block)	Per-transaction approval or spending cap; profiles deletable	Confirms sensitive actions with the user (per Meta)
Enforcement	—	Non-compliant agents cut off; returns honored “even when an agent doesn’t act as intended”	—

The numbers, with their caveats attached. Meta’s figures are Meta’s own, from the October 21 call: 10M+ US/Canada users in six weeks, about a quarter of sign-ups using Muse daily, and — per Zuckerberg on that call — over a quarter of Muse’s engaged shopping users averaging purchases of more than $200. On Amazon’s ad business, Digital Trends, citing WSJ, says “almost $70 billion” last year; Forkast says ”~$68 billion” — the two disagree, so both are attributed. Monetization, from the same Meta call: Meta plans to take a percentage of commerce happening on Muse, plus paid tiers.

Amazon’s numbers come from its own call: 400M+ customers used Alexa for Shopping in the past 12 months, interactions up 570%, US users spending 50% more per order. Jassy drew the strategic conclusion: “Though we anticipate working with horizontal agents, we believe Alexa for Shopping is going to be the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon.”

Walmart’s mechanics come from TechCrunch’s reporting: Agent Gateway is an MCP server; approved agents search inventory and buy on a customer’s behalf without receiving that customer’s personal information or purchase history; separate infrastructure distinguishes an agent’s purchases from the shopper’s own. Walmart published agent terms — no exceeding shopper intent, no access to payment info, task-necessary data only, blocking for violators.

What others say

Amazon’s spokesperson told GeekWire: “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.” Meta’s counter is the security story: Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods,” credentials go into secure storage the agent can use without seeing them, and a review agent called Sentinel gates outbound traffic.

The skeptics argue the wall won’t hold. The Tech Buzz’s November 1 analysis likens Amazon’s digital moat to “sandcastles against a rising tide” and reaches for history: travel agents lost to online booking, taxi companies to ride-hailing, retailers to price-comparison engines — friction-reducing technology has won every round so far. It also flags the EU’s DMA: large platforms already carry interoperability duties, and if agents become the main consumer interface, regulators could eventually force them open. The same outlet reports JPMorgan has restricted Muse too — a single-source claim whose technical details the article itself admits are unclear, so treat it as a lead, not a fact. Bank of America analyst Justin Post framed the earnings angle: Muse’s traction “will likely drive questions on Amazon’s agentic strategy.”

Digital Trends names the commercial logic: an agent hunting the best deal ignores sponsored placements — a structural threat to a business that brought in nearly $70 billion last year. Seen from that line item, Amazon blocking and Walmart welcoming are symmetric moves, each protecting its own margin.

Our take

Read this as a sorting, not a skirmish: given the same agents, Amazon welded the gate shut while Walmart handed the key to the buyer. For teams building shopping agents, both sides publish a playbook. Walmart’s Agent Profiles is the most complete platform-level template yet — dedicated profile, per-transaction approval, spending cap, kill switch — essentially Shopify’s approve-every-purchase logic promoted to a platform interface. Amazon’s block page sets the hard counter-position: identify yourself, get merchant consent, or stay out. The question Muse and its peers must now answer per platform is concrete: will you identify yourself and accept the terms?

For shoppers, the honest advice is to trust neither side quickly. Walmart’s terms are the sturdiest on paper — agents can’t reach payment info, and returns apply “including when an agent doesn’t act as intended” — but Agent Profiles only roll out in November, and dispute handling at scale is untested. On Amazon’s side, “still not great” is both an assessment and a posture: ad revenue grew 11% last quarter, below forecasts, and an CEO whose ads line is under pressure has reasons to talk down outside agents. The unanswered questions are the ones that matter: how do ads enter an agent’s comparison? Who audits what an agent recommends and why? Until those have answers, the first standoff in agentic commerce is just the opening move.

What to watch

November: Walmart’s Agent Profiles rollout produces the first authorized-agent purchase data; watch dispute and return handling.
Holiday quarter: Jassy predicts ad growth returns to the high teens — a bet against the “agents are eroding ads” thesis — while Muse’s commerce take-rate posts its first revenue.
Courts: Amazon’s contract-based claims against Perplexity are still moving; the ruling decides whether “block by terms of service” works for every other platform.