Amazon pushes Alexa for Shopping as it keeps Meta’s Muse out
Because the experience is still not great and no more convenient than ordering directly from a retailer, speaking on the company’s earnings call on Thursday, Jassy said few customers are shopping through outside agents.
Amazon has blocked Meta’s new AI shopping agent, Muse, from buying on its site, and CEO Andy Jassy says outside shopping bots are not yet worth worrying about.
But Jassy said the company expects to work with horizontal agents, and its Shop Direct feature already lists over 250 million products from other stores. For now, Amazon is betting shoppers will stay with its own assistant. So the ban on Muse may not be permanent. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
Meta says more than 10 million people in the US and Canada set up a Muse agent in the first six weeks. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said shopping is the most common use, with over a quarter of users doing it and the average purchase topping $200. Amazon booked nearly $70 billion in ad revenue last year, behind only Google and Meta. Over 400 million people have used it in the past 12 months, he said, with interactions up 570% from a year ago. US customers who use it spend 50% more per order.
Walmart, Shopify and Best Buy have signed up as partners.
JPMorgan analysts have said Muse could become the most widely used consumer AI app since ChatGPT. In its case against Perplexity, it said advertisers pay only for human impressions, so traffic from AI agents has to be detected and filtered out. Jassy said the ads business has not been meaningfully affected, and that weaker third-quarter ad performance was not caused by outside agents.
The remarks come about a month after Amazon cut off Muse, which Meta rolled out in early September. Users trying to place orders through the agent began seeing an error saying that access by an unauthorised AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use. Amazon cited safety concerns. Jassy did not name Muse, but the timing made the target clear. The app quickly pushed ChatGPT off the top free spot on Apple’s App Store. Amazon has not. Zuckerberg took the block calmly, saying not everyone wants to be an early adopter and that Meta will work with companies on terms that suit them. A large share comes from sellers paying to push sponsored products in front of shoppers. As agentic commerce grows, an agent that compares prices and product details does not react to those ads the way a person scrolling a results page might. Amazon has made this argument in court before. A federal judge sided with Amazon in March and temporarily blocked Perplexity’s Comet browser from the site. He pointed instead to Alexa for Shopping, Amazon’s own assistant. He expects it to be the main agent people use to shop on Amazon. Others see an opening. Investor Paul Graham wrote on X that the ban is the first chance he has seen for a startup to build an Amazon rival. Elon Musk, whose Grok bots are also blocked, replied to a similar post saying maybe he should start a competitor. Neuberger analyst Daniel Flax expects Amazon to adapt, citing its record on fast delivery.