Walmart welcomes AI agents while Amazon blocks Muse

The AI shopping wars are here — and longtime nemeses Walmart and Amazon are taking a markedly different approach. Why it matters: The agentic shopping revolution is in its early stages, but retailers expect it to accelerate quickly as consumers become more comfortable deploying AI agents to do their business for them.The big picture: Walmart is throwing open the door to online shopping by outside AI agents just as Amazon is putting up walls to shield its platform from Meta's newly popular Muse.Walmart — which was already allowing external AI agents to shop — announced Wednesday that it will debut a new management system to make sure consumers can "use the agents they choose to shop with Walmart and Sam's Club, with controls over what each agent can do."Walmart Agent Gateway — together with Agent Profiles — will enable customers to set agentic spending limits, require them to approve or review the purchase, and cut off access, Walmart CEO John Furner announced.Amazon, meanwhile, recently blocked Muse from perusing and buying products on its platform less than two weeks after it launched.Amazon said it did not authorize Muse to access customer accounts, scrape data or process transa…

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