Why Your AI Shopping Assistant Keeps Hitting a Wall

AI agents can handle your grocery run-until a website demands proof they're human. That's what Meta's Muse ran into at Walmart, one of its retail partners, which said its verification checks weren't meant to stop the assistant. Amazon has gone further, deliberately blocking the tool from shopping on its site, according to TechCrunch.

Personal agents like Muse are pitched as helpers that navigate sites, fill carts and book travel for you. But granting an agent permission doesn't mean a website has agreed to deal with it. Some blocks are deliberate; others come from security systems that can't tell legitimate agents from unwanted automated traffic. Either way, you may end up doing the task yourself.

Money raises the stakes. On JPMorgan Chase's October earnings call, CFO Jeremy Barnum said some agents use shared login credentials and screen scraping to move funds-methods he called "not secure." The bank blocks them where it can, and Barnum warned customers who hand over credentials could bear responsibility if an agent acts unwantedly.

Amazon is also fighting Perplexity over its Comet AI browser, arguing the agent violates its access rules and risks customer data, while Perplexity says users authorized it. A federal appeals court vacated a preliminary injunction against Perplexity in August 2026, though the dispute continues. Amazon, notably, runs its own Buy for Me feature that purchases from other brands' sites.

Commercial rules matter too. eBay's user agreement bars unauthorized buy-for-me agents without permission, and Delta told TechCrunch it has no integration letting third-party agents book flights through its site, without confirming whether it blocks specific agents.

Existing bot protections can interfere as well. Walmart's case shows a blocked agent isn't always a deliberate ban-human-verification prompts can interrupt automated sessions-and Zillow has acknowledged its anti-scraping defenses sometimes catch agents it permits. Cloudflare now lets site owners separate search crawlers, AI training bots and user-directed agents, with new domains since September 15 defaulting to allowing search crawlers while blocking training bots and agents on ad pages. Shopify's checkout tools let compatible browser agents update details and submit orders after buyer confirmation, handing control back for required authentication.