Personal AI agents, like Meta’s Muse, Instinct, ChatGPT’s Dots and others, are ushering in a new wave of consumer AI that involves more than just answering queries. These AI agents can actually perform tasks on users’ behalf, like booking flights, making dinner reservations, ordering groceries, and more, without having to be technical enough to set up OpenClaw or another agent on your own computer.
But consumers who adopt these agents often run into problems when the website on the other end of their request prevents the AI from doing the job.
More recently, Amazon began blocking Meta’s Muse AI agent on its retail site, meaning the agent could no longer browse or make purchases from its product catalog.
However, the problem is not limited to Amazon or Muse. User complaints on social media indicate that their agents often encounter similar blocks. Some of these are intentional, like Amazon’s, while others are the result of traditional website anti-bot measures designed to protect against spam and malicious activity.
What is not clear to the end user is whether the blocking is accidental on the part of the website owner, leaving them frustrated by both the service provider or retailer and the agent trying to facilitate the transaction.
For example, TechCrunch received a handful of complaints on social media claiming that Muse could not complete a purchase on Walmart’s retail website. (NBC also reported that this was an issue Walmart faced during its testing of the AI agent.)
But a Walmart spokesperson told us that wasn’t intentional. In fact, Walmart is partnering with Muse, as was announced at Meta’s Connect developer conference in September. The company said it wants to be where its customers are, and that now includes being available through AI agent experiences.
The problem that Walmart customers often seem to encounter (see below) is that the website presents a button that must be clicked to verify that the visitor is human. If this experience is interrupted, the check may fail and the agent is started.
This indicates that the current technology we use to verify humans and protect websites from spam and bots may not be the best solution for the agent-driven era of the web we are currently heading into.
To address this issue, industry partners including Meta, Walmart, Stripe, Sierra, Genesys, Rocket, NiCE, and Decagon began working on an open standard that would dictate how AI agents can communicate with businesses, helping separate the good bots acting on the user’s behalf from the bad ones. This protocol will be specifically focused on agent-to-agent communication for e-commerce purposes, Meta said in a blog post.
In the meantime, consumer confusion is great.
Although Walmart is at least trying to be accessible through AI agents, other companies aren’t as enthusiastic about the idea or haven’t fully adopted the technology.
For example, booking flights is currently one of the top use cases offered to agents, but many people have reported issues with airlines rejecting their agents’ requests.
Delta, for example, told us that the company is taking steps to protect its customers from unauthorized automated activity and that if it were to open up to AI agents, it should be done with “security and customer experience in mind.”
“While Delta does not currently have a partnership or integration that allows a third-party AI agent to purchase or book Delta flights on behalf of a customer on our digital platforms, we continue to evaluate how new technologies, including external AI agents, could improve the way customers interact with Delta,” said Heena Chavda, Delta’s general manager of global communications, in response to our questions about whether or not to block agents, as some users have complained.
United hasn’t been as direct as Delta, but a spokesperson pointed us to the portion of its terms of service policy, which says the user agrees “not to use any robot, spider, other automatic device, or manual process to monitor or copy this website or the content contained herein or for any other unauthorized purpose without the prior written permission of United.” (United did not respond to a follow-up question about whether it was blocking specific personal AI agents, like Muse.)
Complaints from early adopters on social media referenced a number of brands allegedly blocking AI agents, including Yelp, eBay, Zillow, Pizza Hut, Adidas, and various airlines. Some believe that blocking activity appears to have increased recently.
A few people even said eBay suspended their accounts because of their use of agentic AI. Another complained that Google kicked out Instinct while it cleaned out his Gmail inbox for him.
Despite efforts to force agents to reserve tables at restaurants and perform other tedious tasks, Yelp told us it doesn’t allow non-human traffic on its platform unless the agent has paid to access Yelp content and data through its data licensing program. This means that agents trying to use its site to get a quote, add a user to a waitlist, or reserve a table for them will likely fail if they don’t have a formal partnership with Yelp.
eBay told TechCrunch that its approach is not to ban all third-party sales agents from making purchases. Instead, its policies restrict unauthorized agents and actions, like automated scraping and pattern training.
Adidas, Zillow and Pizza Hut did not respond or declined to comment at the time of publication.
A major company involved in this area is Cloudflare, which offers site protection against AI agents that might train on its data and handle other automated activities. Some suspect that Cloudflare and other similar content delivery networks (CDNs) are currently disrupting Muse traffic. This is attributed to a change to the crawler’s default settings on September 15, which allows site owners to block AI training while allowing other types of crawlers. Existing sites that were previously configured to block AI bots for security reasons were later changed to block AI agents on all pages containing advertisements.
However, when we asked if Cloudflare had any idea what was happening with the blocking of these personal AI agents, like Muse and others, the company responded that it had no specific data to share at this time. Instead, it pointed us to its free public data hub, Cloudflare Radar. The site shows the increase in bot activity (which Cloudflare has also commented on previously), but it doesn’t help differentiate good bots from bad.
Cloudflare also has a vested interest in mitigating AI traffic to websites because it now runs a marketplace where AI bots must pay for the data they access. The company recently began testing a new web browser designed specifically for AI agents.
Given the rapid evolution of the industry, Meta’s decision to form specific brand partnerships for access to Muse appears to be the right path forward, as does its decision to focus on new standards. In doing so, it assures its customers that its agent, at least, is welcome on these partners’ sites – so any access issues would be a bug to report.
Meta also maintains a list of “connectors” (i.e. partners) within the Muse application, which continues to grow. Many of Meta’s recently announced partners are not yet on this list. But given Muse’s rapid expansion, which now includes partner tools for small businesses, a larger revamp of Muse’s connector roster will likely be on the way soon.
“To deny a personal agent means to deny the customer behind them. We would rather work with companies to address the underlying concerns than see them lose that customer,” Meta said in its announcement regarding recently announced plans to develop a standard. “There is a path that is good for users and good for businesses. It starts with clear standards, gives businesses more predictable control, and moves toward a more efficient way for agents to work together.”
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