Amazon blocks Grok Bot shopping; Musk floats an Amazon rival
Amazon has blocked Elon Musk's Grok Bot agent from placing orders on its site, telling users that unauthorized AI agents violate the terms they agreed to, according to several Chinese tech reports. Musk responded by suggesting users shop elsewhere for cheaper goods and wrote on X that "maybe we should create a company that competes with Amazon," though no product plan has been announced. The reports add that Amazon previously restricted Perplexity's Comet and Meta's Muse, lists programs such as ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and GoogleAgent-Shopping in robots.txt, and runs its own Rufus, Alexa for Shopping and Buy for Me, while Shopify has opened its catalog to more agents through Shop MCP.
It shows how agentic shopping is turning control of the retail front door into a fight over who may buy on a user's behalf and who owns product discovery.