Amazon blocked Meta’s new Muse agent from making purchases on Amazon.com, according to GeekWire, which first spotted the change. Users who send Muse to buy something now get a message reading, “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed.” Oh, snap. That was quick!
Amazon’s position is that Meta never asked. Though let’s be real — the answer would’ve been no!
An Amazon spokesperson said:
“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.”
Amazon’s specific objections are that Meta didn’t tell Amazon that Muse would be shopping its store and never sought authorization, that Muse doesn’t identify itself as an agent while browsing, and that it appears to capture and store customer credentials, including the ability to pull up account information like order history when asked.
Meta’s counter is that the credentials never reach the model. The company previously said that Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods,” and that credentials are “held in secure storage and made available for authentication without being exposed to the model,” including passwords a person types into the browser themselves.
If you read last week’s issue, you saw this coming, because I asked the question directly. “Can Muse shop on Amazon?”
The answer at the time was yes, through its browser feature, not through Amazon’s API, which isn’t available to any external shopping agent. And I noted that this exact capability is what Perplexity has been fighting Amazon over for almost a year. Turns out the unique feature had a shelf life of about seven days.
Meta should’ve seen this coming. Everyone else saw it coming.
You’re telling me that not one single Meta exec had the foresight to proactively reach out to Amazon before launching Muse and either obtain permission to shop its marketplaces or preclude the ability for Muse to do so at launch, before it became a headline story? Really? Do y’all not read my newsletter?
On Sunday night, Amazon said it is in direct conversation with Meta about the issue, but declined to comment on whether it would consider taking legal action. I’ll keep you posted as the story progresses.
