Online retailers and banks start blocking AI shopping agents

Major websites are shutting out the autonomous AI agents that OpenAI, Meta, Google, xAI, and Instinct have been promoting as tools that can shop, book travel, and manage tasks on a user’s behalf, according to The Verge. In recent weeks, users of Meta’s Muse, xAI’s Grok, OpenAI’s Dots, and Instinct have reported being blocked from completing tasks on popular sites.

Yelp told TechCrunch it only allows AI agents that pay into its data licensing program. Delta Air Lines is preventing agents from booking tickets for users. JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab confirmed they block AI agents from accessing financial accounts, citing security concerns. Some users say sites that once worked with their agents, including Cars.com and Amtrak, are no longer accessible, which suggests other companies may be quietly blocking agents too.

Amazon has been the most aggressive. It banned Perplexity’s agentic shopping feature last year and sued the startup, arguing that companies buying on a customer’s behalf “should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate.” Perplexity countered that Amazon’s real concern is losing human eyeballs for its ads, and described its agent as an extension of the user’s own right to hire help. A judge ordered Perplexity to stop its agents from shopping on Amazon, but an appeals court overturned that ruling in August, and Amazon has since filed an amended complaint. Amazon has also told Meta that Muse’s “continued access” violates its site policies, and xAI’s Grok, Instinct’s agent, and OpenAI’s Dots have reportedly hit the same wall. xAI owner Elon Musk responded by suggesting he “should start a competitor to Amazon.”

Why it matters for the agent economy

Chris Canal, CEO of AI safety evaluator EquiStamp, told The Verge the blocks hurt the perceived value of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, since their pitch rests on agents being able to do nearly anything online. “If there are companies that are actively working to make that not happen, there are just fewer useful things the agents can do,” he said.

Meta has taken a different approach, writing in a post that “turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it,” and that it would rather resolve retailers’ concerns directly than lose the business. Muse now has partnerships letting it shop on Walmart, Gap, Sephora, and Best Buy, and Shopify has opened its network of storefronts to AI agents.

Even where agents aren’t explicitly banned, they are running into anti-bot systems built for unrelated reasons. Reports on Reddit suggest Google has flagged some accounts using Muse for “suspicious activity,” and some users report checkout problems on Walmart despite Meta’s partnership there. Canal said these systems were built to stop scrapers and scammers, not personal agents, but agents trigger the same safeguards. Cloudflare, which provides web infrastructure to many sites, has added tools letting sites block AI crawlers with one click and has targeted bots that scrape for both search indexing and AI training.

The Verge said it contacted OpenAI and Google for comment and did not immediately hear back; Instinct declined to comment. Canal predicted the blocks will make ordinary browsing more frustrating, with sites adding more human-verification steps. What to watch next is whether Amazon’s amended complaint against Perplexity reshapes the legal rules for agentic shopping, and whether more retailers follow Meta’s partnership model instead of outright blocks.