The RealReal tightens bot defenses after AI agent exploited its cart holds

The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion marketplace, said it has updated its bot defenses to make it harder for AI shopping agents to use its site, The Verge reported.

The change follows a Verge report that found an AI agent could exploit The RealReal’s item reserve system. On the site, adding an item to a cart puts it “on hold” for 20 minutes, blocking other shoppers from buying it. Using Meta’s shopping agent Muse, The Verge instructed the bot to keep re-adding the same listings to a cart every time the hold expired. That tied up products for hours or longer, locking out human buyers.

After the story published, The RealReal’s chief technology officer, Luke Friang, said in an email that the company had fixed the specific Muse issue the Verge story flagged. The retailer’s updated bot defense configuration now makes it far harder for any AI agent to log in, add items to a cart, or complete a checkout, Friang said. Agents can still surface The RealReal’s listings and send Muse users to product pages, he said, adding that the company plans to keep strengthening its protections as AI-driven shopping develops. Meta did not respond to a request for comment from The Verge.

Shopping has become one of the main uses people find for AI agents. Meta told investors on its most recent earnings call that shopping was the most common use case for Muse so far, and that the average purchase through the agent topped $200. The company has said 10 million people in the US downloaded the Muse app within 40 days of its release.

That growth is pushing retailers to decide how much access to give automated shoppers. Amazon has already blocked agents from buying on its site, a response tied partly to concerns that agent-driven shopping could cut into advertising revenue if customers stop visiting retailer pages directly. The RealReal’s case shows a narrower but concrete problem: a reserve system built for human browsing habits can be overwhelmed by a bot that never tires of adding and re-adding items to a cart, something a person would rarely bother doing for hours at a stretch.

What happens next depends on how other consignment and specialty retailers respond. The RealReal says it will keep adjusting its defenses as agent use grows, and whether Meta or other agent makers change how Muse interacts with reserve-style holds on partner sites remains unaddressed in the companies’ public statements so far.