Walmart Opens the Door to AI Shopping Agents, Amazon Slams It Shut

Walmart will let outside AI agents buy directly from its shelves, while Amazon has posted rules that shut every one of them out — and 37 of 51 large U.S. retailers block shopping bots without ever deciding to.

That is the map of American retail as the first holiday season of the AI shopping agent arrives. Walmart built a dedicated entrance for software that shops on a customer's behalf. Amazon posted a guard. Most other large chains sit in between, picking which AI platforms to work with or turning agents away by accident. For consumers handing errands to assistants like Meta's Muse, OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent or Grok Bot from SpaceX Super Intelligence (SpaceXSI, formerly xAI), the result is a patchwork: an agent that breezes through one checkout hits a wall at the next.

The stakes are simple. Whoever controls the agent's access controls the customer relationship once software starts doing the shopping — and the advertising money that comes with it.

How did Walmart open up?

On Oct. 21, Walmart announced three pieces that make outside agents a sanctioned way to shop at Walmart and Sam's Club.

• Agent Profiles give each agent its own identity inside a customer's account, so its orders show up separately. Shoppers can require approval for every purchase or set a spending cap — Walmart uses $50, $100 and $200 as examples — and Walmart says it may still ask for extra approval below the limit. Profiles launch within a month of the announcement.
• The Walmart Agent Gateway is an MCP server that lets approved agents search inventory and place orders directly, instead of clicking through pages built for people. It starts as a beta for companies and developers. As TechCrunch noted, agents can find a customer's usual items without Walmart handing over the shopper's broader purchase history.
• Agent rules bar agents from acting beyond what the shopper intends. Agents never receive card numbers, cannot add or change payment methods, and get only the data a task requires. Walmart's normal returns process applies even when an agent gets something wrong. Agents that break the terms "will be blocked from Walmart's site."

Walmart also made a pricing promise: "We price products, not people, so the prices that an AI agent sees are the same prices that a human would see on Walmart.com," the company said, as CNBC reported.

Walmart already sells through conversational integrations with Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini, alongside its own Sparky assistant. PYMNTS described one hybrid: Gemini surfaces Walmart products, then hands the basket to Sparky. Meta's Connect announcements in September listed Walmart first among new Muse shopping connectors, and Walmart and Shopify are among the companies developing the Personal Agent Protocol that Meta and Sierra announced in October, according to PYMNTS.

Why did Amazon block the bots?

Amazon is the opposite pole. On Sept. 20 it cut Muse off from shopping on Amazon.com. Users began seeing a pop-up that read, "Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed," GeekWire reported.

Amazon said Meta never told it Muse would access the store, that the agent did not identify itself and that it appeared to capture customer credentials. Meta has said Muse cannot see passwords or payment methods.

"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," an Amazon spokesperson said.

The legal footing sits in Amazon's Conditions of Use, which now include Agent Terms. Any agent must announce itself in its user-agent string as "Agent/[agent name]," must not mimic human typing or solve CAPTCHAs, must answer truthfully when asked if it is a computer, and may not access Amazon at all if the company has asked it to stay away. Amazon reserves the right to limit agents "at our sole discretion."

The Muse block followed a lawsuit Amazon filed against Perplexity last year over its Comet browser agent. A federal appeals court sided with Perplexity in August, The Verge noted, though the ruling left Amazon room to pursue claims based on its terms of service.

The money explains the stance. Amazon took in nearly $70 billion in advertising revenue last year, much of it from sponsored placements in front of shoppers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Nov. 1. An agent that weighs specs and prices instead of scrolling past ads weakens the reason brands pay for those placements.

CEO Andy Jassy played down the threat on Amazon's earnings call. Amazon's own Alexa for Shopping "is going to be the primary shopping agent customers use to shop Amazon," he said, adding it had been used by more than 400 million people in the past year. Of outside agents, he said "few customers are doing much shopping this way yet, as the experience is still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly."

Amazon also runs Buy for Me, which uses its own agent to purchase from other brands' sites without the shopper leaving Amazon. One marketplace executive told CNBC the dispute is "about who holds the data" more than about agents themselves.

Where does Grok Bot stand?

SpaceXSI's Grok Bot belongs to the newer class of personal agents that shop the open web the way a person would — driving a browser through a merchant's own pages, with purchases going back to the user for approval. Payments and fraud firm Forter groups it with Muse, Instinct and ChatGPT Agent as screen-scraping agents, as opposed to protocol checkouts like OpenAI's and Google's.

Forter's October data shows it first detected Grok Bot orders on Sept. 1. Counting Grok Bot and Instinct, agentic orders on Forter's network grew 48% from August to September, double the 24% rate without them. Grok Bot now has the largest share of orders above $500 and the highest average purchase, just ahead of OpenAI. The average agentic order across all agents was $226.

That browser-first approach is also why Grok Bot runs into the same wall as Muse. In mid-October, users posted that their agents could no longer order from Amazon and saw the same "unauthorized AI agent" message, Teslarati reported. Amazon has not commented publicly on Grok Bot specifically.

Elon Musk's answer was to route around it. "Just ask Grok @Bot to buy what you want someplace else and get a better deal. There are far more purchasing websites than just Amazon!" he wrote on X. He earlier showed an order the agent placed on Lego's website, and later mused, "Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon" — though no product or plan has followed.

The open question for every open-web agent is whether retailers move toward Walmart's model of identified, permissioned agents or toward Amazon's closed doors.

Who else lets agents buy?

Several large retailers meet agents on platforms they have vetted.

• QVC and HSN let agents complete purchases and proactively send their catalogs to OpenAI and Google, a QVC Group executive told the Journal — while conceding legacy security systems may block some agents unintentionally.
• Etsy lets U.S. shoppers buy some listings directly inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Copilot.
• Shopify's Agentic Storefronts let eligible merchants syndicate products into ChatGPT, Google's AI tools, Copilot and Meta from one dashboard.
• The Muse roster goes beyond Walmart: Meta added Best Buy, American Eagle Outfitters, DICK'S Sporting Goods, Fanatics, Gap, Michael Kors, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair as shopping connectors in September, plus Shop Pay and PayPal for payments.

Those are partnerships with one agent, not an open invitation — but they put a sizable slice of mall retail on the welcoming side.

What about the middle ground?

Target calls itself the first mass retailer with shopping available across Google's AI Mode and Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, including multi-item baskets and Target Circle loyalty sign-in. Its own site is another matter: a Target spokesperson told The Verge the company has safeguards preventing unauthorized agents from accessing customer accounts and starting transactions, and a Verge reporter found Muse caught by Target's bot check one day and through it the next.

Tapestry, parent of Coach and Kate Spade, sells through Google's AI Mode and Gemini with explicit shopper approval on every order — but agents still cannot check out on the brands' own websites, PYMNTS reported, citing the Journal. The company pointed to fraud and "inventory hoarding," bots filling carts without buying, while preparing its systems in case it opens checkout later.

Home Depot says it will support agents that search, compare and buy, provided they identify themselves and the customer they represent. Chief Information Officer Angie Brown said the company is in active talks with Meta over how Muse should introduce itself, PYMNTS reported, citing Business Insider.

The RealReal shows how fast positions move. Its CTO told The Verge the luxury resale site would "remain open to third-party AI agents, allowing them to browse, log in and interact with our marketplace." Then a Verge reporter showed Muse could keep renewing 20-minute cart holds on fresh listings all day, freezing other shoppers out. The company updated its bot defenses to stop that while still letting agents point shoppers to items.

On the closed side, Kohl's does not let agents make purchases, a spokeswoman told the Journal, even as it runs its own Gemini-built shopping assistant. eBay changed its User Agreement in January to bar "buy-for-me agents, LLM-driven bots, or any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review" without its permission, after blocking Perplexity, Anthropic and Amazon bots in robots.txt while still allowing Google's shopping bot. eBay says it is testing agentic experiences of its own.

Are most blocks deliberate?

No — and that is the most striking finding. Identity-verification firm Billions Network audited the published access rules of 51 large U.S. online retailers in August. Only 11 had taken a deliberate position on AI agents. Five explicitly restrict them. Another 37 block shopping agents largely by accident, through older robots.txt rules written to keep scrapers out of login and checkout pages. None had a way for a verified agent to complete a purchase, a finding CNBC also highlighted.

Pottery Barn, West Elm and Williams-Sonoma came closest to openness by publishing an llms.txt file that tells agents how to navigate their sites. Billions sells identity and verification tools for AI agents, so it has a stake in the problem it measured; the audit is also a snapshot of stated policies as of August, not proof of enforcement.

A separate scan by Rezolve Ai of the National Retail Federation's top 100 found only three retailers publish a file telling an agent how to check out: Chewy, Lululemon and Academy Sports + Outdoors. Costco, Apple, Home Depot and Target showed nothing published for agents. Apple and Costco have not publicly staked out a position.

The full WebProNews tally sorts 44 major retailers: 18 sell through agents, 7 are partial, 5 explicitly restrict, and 14 block by default through old bot rules — including Lowe's, Nike, Macy's, Petco, Newegg, REI, Crate & Barrel, AutoZone, Michaels, Tractor Supply, BJ's Wholesale, Staples, Foot Locker and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Why does the line fall where it does?

The split tracks business models more than technology. Walmart wants incremental orders and will manage agents to get them. Amazon earns a fortune when people browse its pages. "Same agent, different business model, different answer," PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote. She also argued the two giants are closer than they look: "Agents come in on the owner's terms."

A PYMNTS Intelligence survey found 80% of mid-size merchants expect to pay a fee or commission on agent-driven sales — which suggests blocking is often a negotiating position rather than a permanent stance.

For shoppers, the practical picture is simple for now. An agent can do the research almost anywhere. Whether it can finish the purchase depends on the store — and at the largest online store in the country, the answer is still no.