Amazon To Meta’s Muse: Not In My Store | Fast Five Shorts

Headline number one, Amazon has cut off Meta's new Muse personal AI agent from shopping on Amazon.com, citing data security concerns after Meta declined to voluntarily exclude the site from the experience.

According to Geekwire, Amazon says Meta never told it Muse would access its store, that the agent doesn't identify itself when it browses, and that it appears to capture and store customer credentials.

Meta has said Muse has no visibility into people's passwords or payment methods.

Shoppers trying to use Muse on Amazon now see a pop up warning that access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's conditions of use.

Amazon says third party shopping apps should, quote, operate openly and respect service provider decisions.

End quote.

Now, for those loyal listeners, you all will remember that Amazon has spent the better part of the past year keeping outside agents off its site, suing Perplexity and moving to block shopping agents from Google and OpenAI.

The stakes here are high.

Amazon generated more than $68 billion in ad revenue last year, a business that depends partially on people browsing its pages.

The legal backdrop here is also fascinating because the 9th Circuit overturned Amazon's injunction against perplexity on August 4, ruling the user, not the AI company, was accessing Amazon's computers, leaving Amazon to lean on its terms of service rather than its anti hacking law.

All right, producer Ella.

Producer Ella is going to step in for our friends at the A and M and she's going to ask me.

I'll put you on the spot question for every one of today's headlines.

So, producer Ella, how am I going to be put on the spot for headline number one?

All right, Chris.

A and M wants to know who ultimately has more power as this agentic commerce battle rages on the AI super app or the Megalith E commerce marketplace like Amazon.

Ooh, the Megalith.

That's a big word, Ella.

I like that.

I like that.

Oh, man, that's a tough question.

But I think it's a really, really important question to start out the show.

I think it's going to be a grounding point for this entire show when we look at the headlines in front of us too, Ella.

But sadly, sadly, I think this might surprise some people.

I'm not sure this is a battle Amazon can win.

I think there's going to be a struggle here for Amazon, Ella, and it could be also why they took the defensive position, allowing prime purchases on other retailers websites, which we're going to cover in a few headlines.

And the reason I say that it's going to be a struggle for them is that the AI engines, the LLMs, they are coming.

Agentix storefronts are coming.

And if Amazon doesn't provide that marketplace to connect with those LLMs, somebody else is going to do it.

Is it Walmart?

Is it TikTok?

I don't know.

But the consumer love potential is so great that no one's going to avoid it.

Somebody's going to step into the void and fill the need that the customers want.

So I don't think the answer, I don't think the answer is shutting down the bots to keep a hold of advertising income in the long run for Amazon, short term.

Short term, however, I do think it's the right move.

But longer term, if the demand is what everyone thinks thinks it will be.

Shutting off the LLM bots, in my opinion, is going to hurt in two ways.

One, it's going to hurt your advertising revenue, but two, in the long run, it's going to hurt your overall retail sales.

Amazon can figure out its way around the loss of the first one, particularly if Alexa for shopping can also take hold.

But the second one, the second one is a lot harder to overcome.

I'm reminded of the famous quote from Jeff Bezos.

Bezos my margin is your opportunity.

Mr. Jeff used to say, or like to say, and that is exactly how the LLMs are thinking about things.

Ella, the LLMs are going after Amazon's margin with this strategy.

And Amazon, I don't necessarily like the position that they are in.