Meta launched Muse on September 8 as a personal AI agent that does more than answer questions. It can open a browser, fill out forms and negotiate on a user’s behalf, and it keeps working after the app is closed .

Shopping introduces another requirement: Muse needs a user’s approval before making a purchase, but it also needs a way to pay. At launch, that was Link, Stripe’s agent wallet, which generates a one-time card number. Shop Pay was listed as coming soon.

Muse’s first two weeks of shopping were therefore less about what the agent can do and more about who decides whether it may stand between a business and its customers. This is a media question as much as a retail one.

Shopify Brings Shop Pay To Meta’s Muse AI Agent

Shopify opened its stores to Muse, which Meta said launched with access to Shopify’s full catalog. On September 21, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said on X the company was “partnering deeply with Muse to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores.” Two days later, Shopify announced that Shop Pay was now available as a wallet in Muse.

Meta was also expanding Muse’s retail reach and at its Connect event on September 23, it named Walmart, Best Buy, Gap, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair among the retailers it is adding.

Amazon Blocks Meta’s Muse AI Agent From Its Store

Amazon did the opposite. It blocked Muse from browsing and buying on its site. In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson said third-party applications that buy on customers’ behalf “should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate,” and that Amazon had asked Meta to remove Amazon from the experience.

Meta’s safety documentation , published before the dispute, describes how Muse shops. Credentials a user enters are held in secure storage the agent cannot see and are inserted into the browser when needed.

In a passage on advertising, the same document says that when Muse browses the internet, it will appear as the user’s activity. Amazon’s Conditions of Use , by contrast, require agents to identify themselves in every web request and reserve Amazon’s right to limit their access at its sole discretion.

On August 4, the Ninth Circuit held that Amazon was unlikely to prove Perplexity’s Comet shopping agent had “accessed” its computers under federal and California computer-access law. The court added that the outcome did not impair Amazon’s ability to regulate access through private terms of service. One statutory route narrowed. The contractual gate held.

Media Companies Have Seen This Platform Problem Before

Meta also restricts which AI assistants can use its own platforms. Its WhatsApp business terms bar providers of general-purpose AI assistants from distributing them through the platform when the AI is the primary functionality, “as determined by Meta in its sole discretion,” with exceptions in certain countries.

The company whose agent Amazon turned away therefore decides which rival assistants may use its own business messaging network.

Media companies know a version of this question from the other side. For two decades, publishers have negotiated their dependence on technology platforms for distribution and audiences. An agent adds another intermediary .

It can read a publisher’s reporting without generating a page view, compare products without showing a retailer’s advertising or book a trip without routing the customer through the travel site. Traffic, ad inventory, affiliate revenue and subscriptions all become questions of agent access.

Muse can find what a user wants and act on their behalf, but that only takes it so far. Shopify and Amazon have shown that businesses still decide whether an AI agent gets through the door and, ultimately, whether it gets to reach their customers.