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Amazon Brings Down the Hammer on Meta’s Muse AI Agent

Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse AI assistant from making purchases on Amazon.com, telling Gizmodo it asked Meta to remove Amazon from the agentic shopping experience because Muse accesses the site as an undisclosed third party without Amazon's authorization. Meta launched Muse on Sept. 8 as a personal AI agent that handles email, travel booking, shopping and goal tracking, and the app has since reached the number-one spot on Apple's U.S. App Store chart for free iPhone apps. The standoff follows Amazon's 2025 lawsuit against Perplexity over its Comet browser shopping on Amazon, in which the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction in August after finding the customer, not Perplexity, was the party accessing Amazon's computers.

by read3 min views4 publishedSep 21, 2026
Amazon Brings Down the Hammer on Meta’s Muse AI Agent
Image: Gizmodo (auto-discovered)

Just weeks after its launch and subsequent takeover of the app store charts, Meta’s new AI assistant Muse has already been locked out of Amazon.

GeekWire first reported that, as of Sunday night, users trying to make Amazon purchases through Muse saw pop-up messages reading, “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed.”

Amazon confirmed to Gizmodo in an emailed statement that it has asked Meta to stop allowing Muse to shop on Amazon.com on users’ behalf.

“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 told Gizmodo.

The spokesperson compared the arrangement to food delivery apps working with restaurants or travel agencies booking flights with airlines.

“Agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations, and we’ve requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience,” the spokesperson continued.

Meta launched Muse on Sept. 8 as a personal AI agent that can handle tasks like sending emails, booking travel, shopping, and tracking goals. The app has since climbed to the number-one spot on Apple’s U.S. App Store chart for free iPhone apps.

Meta says Muse runs on a secure virtual machine that houses the agent and a user’s data. That machine has its own browser, which Muse can use to navigate websites and complete tasks on a user’s behalf.

Amazon says Meta did not tell the company in advance that Muse would be accessing its site and that the agent does not identify itself while shopping. Amazon also points out that when an AI agent shops for a user, it can bypass some of the personalization and other features built into Amazon’s shopping experience.

The company also raised concerns about how Muse handles customer credentials and account data. Because Muse does not identify itself, Amazon says it is essentially an undisclosed third party accessing customer accounts without Amazon’s knowledge or authorization.

Meta, for its part, has said Muse cannot see users’ passwords or payment methods. Instead, any credentials a user shares with the AI agent are kept in secure storage that allows Muse to use them without actually seeing them. Meta also says Muse asks for user approval before taking actions like making a purchase.

Still, this is not the first time Amazon has tried to keep an AI agent from shopping on its site.

Amazon sued Perplexity in 2025 in an attempt to stop the AI company’s Comet browser from shopping on Amazon. The lawsuit argued that Perplexity violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by accessing Amazon accounts without the company’s authorization.

A federal judge initially granted Amazon a preliminary injunction in March. But in August, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit vacated that order and sent the case back to the district court.

The appeals court found that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on its claim that Perplexity itself was accessing Amazon’s computers. Instead, the judges concluded that the customer was the one accessing Amazon, with Comet acting as a tool on the user’s behalf.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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