AI Agent Battle Begins: Amazon Blocks Meta's AI Agent, E-commerce Entry War Escalates

TL;DR
Meta's newly launched AI Agent Muse has quickly gone viral, with over 900,000 downloads in just six days, topping the free charts in two major app stores in the U.S.
Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its retail website and has demanded that Meta remove Amazon from Muse's shopping features; previously, Amazon had also restricted external shopping agents like Perplexity.
The core conflict behind this is the battle for e-commerce entry: as AI starts to search, compare, and even place orders for users, agents could become a new intermediary layer between consumers and e-commerce platforms, impacting Amazon's sales and advertising revenue.
Unlike Amazon, Shopify has chosen to collaborate with Meta to advance Agentic Checkout.

Meta's newly launched AI Agent Muse is rapidly becoming the new focal point in the tech industry. According to Sensor Tower data, Muse surpassed 902,000 downloads within six days of its launch on September 8, exceeding the 773,000 downloads of the previous Meta AI App during the same period. As of this Monday, Muse has topped the free app charts in both the Apple App Store and Google Play in the U.S.

However, with the rapid growth of Muse's user base, a new question has emerged: when AI not only helps users search for products but also starts shopping directly on their behalf, who decides where it can buy things?

Why is Amazon Blocking Muse?

According to Bloomberg, Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its retail website. Users shopping on Amazon using Muse will see a pop-up indicating that such actions violate Amazon's terms of use. Amazon states that third-party applications that can purchase goods on behalf of consumers should operate transparently and respect whether service providers wish to participate; currently, Amazon has requested that Meta remove it from Muse's shopping experience.

This is not the first time Amazon has restricted external AI agents. Amazon itself is also developing automated shopping tools and has consistently tried to prevent competitors' bots from browsing product catalogs and making purchases. Last year, Amazon even sued Perplexity, claiming that the latter attempted to hide these automated tools after Amazon requested its removal of the shopping agent.

The underlying business logic is not complicated. Currently, consumers use AI primarily for searching, comparing, and recommending products, and they usually still complete purchases on e-commerce platforms like Amazon. However, if users become increasingly accustomed to directly telling AI, "Help me buy a pair of noise-canceling headphones under $200," the agent may decide which platforms to search, which products to compare, and ultimately where to place the order.

This means that AI agents could gradually become a new intermediary layer between consumers and e-commerce platforms. The original text also points out that if agents start completing purchases for consumers, they could very well direct orders to other platforms, thereby affecting Amazon's product sales and advertising revenue.

Amazon Closes Its Doors, Shopify Chooses to Integrate

In contrast to Amazon's stance, Shopify is actively embracing this change. Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is collaborating with Shopify to make it easier for Muse users to shop and check out; Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke also stated that the two parties will promote Agentic Checkout through Shop Pay.

This means that in the future, users may discover products, select items, and complete payments directly within Muse, without needing to navigate to different merchants' websites. Thus, Amazon and Shopify present two different strategies: the former aims to control which agents can enter its commercial ecosystem, while the latter hopes to make it easier for Shopify merchants to become part of the product and transaction network that AI agents can access.

If agents ultimately become the new entry point for consumption, this difference will become significant. In the past, e-commerce platforms competed for users to actively open apps, search for products, and click on ads; in the future, some search, comparison, and even ordering behaviors may be completed by AI in the background. The platforms will need to compete not only over "who the consumer opens first" but also over a new question—"who the AI agent calls first."

AI Agents Are Transitioning from Chat Tools to Transaction Entry

The rapid growth of Muse has drawn attention partly due to this shift in product form. Goldman Sachs believes that one important feature of Muse is that it makes previously complex agent capabilities accessible to ordinary consumers. Users do not need to program; they simply need to make requests through chat, and Muse can assist with shopping, travel, and restaurant bookings, as well as follow up on emails, monitor tasks, and continue working in the background when users are offline.

This is also one of the core differences between agents and traditional chatbots: past AIs were more responsible for providing answers, while today's agents are beginning to attempt to complete actions on behalf of users.

Therefore, the significance of Amazon blocking Muse may not just be a minor friction between platforms. As agents move from searching for information to entering shopping, payment, and booking transactions, competition among tech companies may extend from models and user scales to products, payments, and transaction infrastructures.

When AI starts making decisions for users and completing transactions, who can become the default platform for agents to call may become a new question in the next stage of internet entry competition.

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