Retailers Split on Access for AI Shopping Agents

Oct 18, 2026
Amazon, Target and Walmart are adopting different policies for outside AI shopping agents as merchants address customer data, payment authority and purchase errors.

Retailers are taking different approaches to outside AI shopping agents, PYMNTS reports, citing The Wall Street Journal. Amazon blocks Meta's Muse and OpenAI's dots, Target permits agents from approved providers, and Walmart works with OpenAI and Google to attract shoppers through AI tools.

BrightEdge estimates that purchases through agents are growing 43% each month and have roughly quadrupled since April. However, only about 3% of the ecommerce companies it works with allow agents to complete transactions for customers.

Agents can give merchants less information about the customers they represent than direct website visits. Retailers must also verify that an agent has permission to pay for a customer, while purchase errors could increase returns and credit card chargebacks. Merchant operated agents can use internal inventory, promotion and fulfillment data while keeping the transaction within the retailer's services.

We hope you enjoyed this article

Consider subscribing to one of our newsletters like Retail & Ecommerce AI Weekly or Daily AI Brief.

Also, consider following us on social media:

AI Brief AI Brief (X)
Free newsletter

Retail & Ecommerce AI Weekly

The weekly on AI in retail and ecommerce: shopping agents, online stores and marketplaces, checkout, and AI inside physical stores.

AI Token Webinar

Whitepaper

Tensordyne Napier: What If One Rack Could Do the Work of Nine?

Tensordyne

This Tensordyne whitepaper presents Napier, an inference-focused AI processor and rack-scale system based on the company’s TDN Math logarithmic number system. It examines infrastructure requirements for large mixture-of-experts and agentic models, compares major inference architecture approaches, and details the TDN AIP processor, TDN72 pod, TDN Link fabric, and Napier Ultra configuration. The paper reports simulation-based performance, cost, and accuracy-validation results, including Tensordyne’s projected comparison of one Napier rack with a nine-rack Nvidia Rubin plus Groq deployment; the chip is reported as taped out and in fabrication.

Read more

You may also like

Free, six days a week

Daily AI Brief: the AI news that matters, in your inbox.