I’d happily let an AI agent buy paper towels for me. Same brand, same size, delivered before we run out. Ask me before paying. If it gets the order wrong, we have mildly disappointing paper towels. I’ll survive.
A couch? I want to sit on it first. A gift? I wouldn’t be caught dead admitting I outsourced the thought.
That’s the territory personal agents are moving into. Meta launched Muse this September, inside the Meta AI app and WhatsApp. It has its own browser, fills out forms, and asks before it buys.
Less than two weeks after Muse launched, Amazon slammed the door.
People trying to shop on Amazon through Muse began seeing a message about an “unauthorized AI agent.” Amazon says it had asked Meta to keep Muse out of its store. Meta didn’t, so Amazon blocked it. The customer still wanted to buy something. They’d just sent software to do the browsing.
Amazon has a fair objection. It says Muse didn’t identify itself and appeared to store customer credentials. Meta says those credentials are kept in secure storage Muse cannot read, and users must approve purchases. Those safeguards matter. The logged-in browser still runs on Meta’s infrastructure. If the agent places a bad order, somebody has to deal with it.
Amazon’s annual report also shows why the shopping trip is important. In 2025, it reported $68.6 billion in advertising services revenue, including sponsored, display, and video ads. That figure covers more than ads on shopping pages. It still gives Amazon a strong reason to care who controls what a customer sees before buying.
I spent 14 years at Apple, a company that treated the screen as the product. Whoever owns it decides what you see first. On Amazon, that’s a lot.
Search for paper towels yourself and Amazon can show you other brands, larger packs, sponsored results, and things you hadn’t planned to buy. Some suggestions might help. Others have paid for the chance to be seen.
Paper towels bring me back to the store. Every return visit is another chance to sell me something I wasn’t planning to buy.
Now give an agent a narrower instruction: “Buy the paper towels I got last time, if they can arrive by Thursday.” It could check the delivered price across stores, bring me the order for approval, and skip most of the browsing. Amazon might still get the sale. It gets fewer chances to influence which sale.
Brand won’t disappear from that transaction. I asked for the same paper towels, after all. The shift gets even more interesting when I don’t know what to buy. If I ask an agent to compare lunchboxes, the products it puts on my shortlist get my attention. Everyone else may never get a look.
That’s a harder problem for brands than a bad ad placement. On a results page, you can still show up on page two. A shortlist of three has no page two. If the agent leaves you off, the shopper never knows you existed, and you never learn why.
So what gets a product onto the list? Probably whatever software can check: price, delivery date, return policy, reviews, complete product details. For a couch, that might get you considered. It won’t close the sale. I still want to sit on it.
Amazon understands the appeal. Its own Alexa for Shopping can compare products, schedule routine purchases, and, through Buy for Me, purchase eligible items from other retailers’ sites. Amazon’s examples of routine purchases include paper towels. With Alexa helping me shop, Amazon remains in the conversation even when another store gets the order. With Muse helping me, Meta decides what I see before I buy.
Amazon wants the shopping agent to be Amazon’s.
This isn’t the first time someone has tried to stand between a store and its customers. Amazon did it.
Over two decades, brands decided they had to be on Amazon because that’s where shoppers started. They got the sale. Amazon got the customer: the search box, the reviews, the recommendations, and eventually the right to charge those same brands for a better spot on the page.
Muse is attempting the same move one layer up. If shoppers start with an agent instead of a search box, Amazon becomes one of the stores the agent checks. It still ships the box. Someone else decides what goes in it.
Every layer that gets between a customer and a store eventually sells access to that customer.
Agents won’t be immune to advertising, either. They can read sponsored listings. The companies running them could eventually sell priority in their answers. A single recommended product in a chat window might be more persuasive than a page full of ads, especially if I never see what was left out.
I’d still let an agent handle the boring reorder. For a couch or a gift, it can do the research and bring me options. I want the final call.
Paper towels first. If my agent suggests switching brands, I want to know whether it found a better deal or a better advertiser.
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