eBay appears to have shut the door on third-party AI agents

eBay appears to have blocked third-party AI agents, including Meta's Muse, from browsing its marketplace. A Verge reader reported that his Muse agent, which had curated daily watch-listing digests for weeks, was suddenly blocked from pulling eBay links and details, though Muse sometimes redirected users to mirror sites instead. eBay's user agreement already banned buy-for-me agents and LLM-driven bots that order without human review, but agents like Muse could previously browse listings. An eBay spokesperson said the company "take[s] a selective approach" to third-party access and has "restricted agent access in certain cases, including unauthorized scraping and training on our data," while declining to confirm new limits; Meta declined to comment. Retailers vary widely: Amazon blocks external agents entirely, Target allows some browsing, and Shopify has opened its catalog so agents can purchase on shoppers' behalf. Agentic commerce could upend online shopping, especially since retail sites assume human buyers. The Verge previously showed Muse could hold listings hostage on The RealReal by repeatedly adding items to a cart. Adoption remains limited: Uber fulfilled just four agent-booked rides in Q3 and around 500 Uber Eats orders during Halloween week, and DoorDash reported only several hundred agent-placed orders out of 993 million total.

(Source：The Verge)