Amazon has a new kind of customer it does not want: one that is not human. In early September, Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent that can send emails, complete forms and book travel. With Link’s wallet for agents, provided by Stripe, it can also make purchases.
The basic version is free, and it quickly topped the U.S. free-app charts. Amazon promptly banned Muse agents from its site. The company argued that outside applications making purchases for customers should operate openly and respect a retailer’s decision about whether to participate.
This was not Amazon’s first battle with AI shoppers. In November 2024, the AI-powered search engine Perplexity launched Buy with Pro, allowing subscribers to purchase a recommended product with one click. Perplexity’s chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, told Modern Retail that Buy with Pro was “just acting as an agent on behalf of the user that’s looking to make a transaction” and was “complementary” to Amazon’s role as a merchant.
The conflict escalated the following year with Comet, Perplexity’s AI-powered browser. Amazon introduced a technical block, which Perplexity worked around within 24 hours, then issued a cease-and-desist order. When that failed, Amazon sued, arguing that Comet was “covertly” posing as a human customer and violating its terms.
There was also money at stake. Traffic generated by agents complicates how Amazon measures what advertisers are paying for. Advertisers pay for human attention, and Amazon’s advertising business generated $19.8 billion in the second quarter of 2026.
In March 2026, Amazon won a preliminary injunction. But in August, a federal appeals court vacated it, ruling that Perplexity was not accessing Amazon’s website. Its customers were, using the agent to help them.
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