Overview
- Users on X reported on Thursday that xAI’s Grok bots were being blocked from ordering on Amazon and Elon Musk replied to those posts by saying, “Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon.”
- Amazon confirmed it has blocked Meta’s Muse from shopping on customers’ behalf and sent a cease-and-desist to Perplexity over its Comet agents for covertly accessing its site.
- The company is also building its own buyer-facing and seller-facing AI tools, though reporting says internal deployment has been messy and duplicated data tools have caused operational problems.
- Security and privacy incidents have driven the actions, including reports that Grok exposed order details in shared screenshots and Amazon’s claim that some agents captured customer credentials.
- Payments firms and merchants are already updating fraud protections and policies, and the dispute could change how e-commerce platforms authenticate agents, how consumers delegate purchases, and where competition in online retail develops.