659: The #1 App In America Just Became Amazon’s Worst Nightmare

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Amazon blocks AI shopping agents like Meta’s Muse because an agent that shops for you never sees a sponsored listing, and advertising is now one of Amazon’s biggest businesses at roughly $68 billion. Amazon cut off Muse’s access to its products and checkout shortly after the app launched.

Muse became the number one downloaded app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play, reaching 3.4 million downloads in three weeks. That is faster than ChatGPT grew at launch.

Toni and I believe this block hurts Amazon sellers the worst. A sale through Muse would still have paid Amazon its FBA fee, and now that sale goes to Walmart, Best Buy, Wayfair, or a Shopify store instead.

This post covers what Muse is, why Amazon is terrified, where shoppers now start their product searches, and what sellers should do as every major tech company launches its own shopping agent.

Key takeaways

• Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse from browsing its products and checking out, citing the safety of customer credentials.
• Muse hit 3.4 million downloads in three weeks and became the number one app on both major app stores.
• Walmart, Best Buy, Shopify, and Wayfair all work with Muse, so blocked Amazon sales flow to them.
• The share of shoppers starting product searches on Amazon fell from 61% in 2022 to 56% two years later.
• Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are all launching shopping agents, which makes a single Amazon-owned agent unlikely to win.
• Only 23% of Amazon sellers describe themselves as thriving, according to Marketplace Pulse.
• Sellers who rely only on Amazon should build a brand and a second sales channel now.

What is Meta’s Muse AI shopping app?

Muse is Meta’s agentic AI assistant, an app on your phone that completes tasks in the background on your behalf. It can work through your email, book appointments, and, most importantly for sellers, shop for you.

Meta launched it as Metamuse and now markets it simply as Muse. Toni saw her first Muse TV commercial during Dancing with the Stars.

She rated the ad a ten out of ten. It reminded her of Apple’s old iPad commercials, the kind that have you emotional by the end before you even know what is being advertised.

Muse is aimed squarely at regular consumers. Anthropic has focused on businesses and engineers, and OpenAI is the only company that has really reached everyday users, so Muse is the first agent built for people who do not use AI for work.

Even here in Silicon Valley, most people use AI only lightly. At an event at my son’s elementary school, I talked to plenty of parents and teachers who use it occasionally and nowhere near its full potential.

Why did Amazon block AI shopping agents like Muse?

Amazon blocked Muse to protect its advertising business, because an agent that shops on a customer’s behalf never clicks a sponsored listing. Advertising brings Amazon roughly $68 billion a year and is its fastest-growing segment in its latest earnings report.

Muse was browsing Amazon and checking out for users in its first weeks. Customers found it extremely convenient, and Amazon shut it down.

This is part of a pattern. Amazon previously sued Perplexity over its AI shopping tool.

Even if an agent never completes the purchase, it still threatens Amazon. An agent that builds shopping lists without any Amazon products pulls discovery away from Amazon entirely.

Does Amazon’s security reason for blocking Muse hold up?

Amazon’s stated reason is that customers should not hand their buying credentials to an unauthorized third party, and Toni and I think that argument is hypocritical. Meta does not store those credentials, and the user explicitly authorizes Muse to shop for them.

Amazon pioneered connected checkout itself. Buy with Amazon lets you check out on outside stores like Zappos using your Amazon account, and Toni shopped at Zappos specifically because checkout felt exactly like Amazon.

Amazon also runs a program called Buy For Me. When a product is missing from Amazon, it places the order on an outside website and has it shipped to you, without asking those websites for permission.

A second Amazon program sends shoppers directly to a brand’s website. Toni recently searched for a client’s product on Amazon and found a listing that sent her straight to that client’s Shopify store.

Amazon treats agents as safe when it controls them. It calls them unsafe when someone else builds them.

How fast is Meta’s Muse growing?

Muse reached 3.4 million downloads in its first three weeks, outpacing ChatGPT’s early growth. It hit number one on both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Meta has an enormous head start because Facebook and Instagram already reach about 3.6 billion people a day. Few companies can push a new app to that many users that quickly.

First movers also benefit from habit. People get used to one AI tool and resist switching, the same way I keep using Claude Code even as competitors flip-flop on which one is better.

Which retailers work with Meta’s Muse?

Walmart, Best Buy, Shopify, and Wayfair adopted Muse right away. The same products sold on Amazon are usually available at those retailers, along with others like Sephora.

When a Muse user cannot buy from Amazon, the sale simply goes to a competitor carrying the same item. Amazon keeps none of it.

Toni already treats Wayfair as her new Amazon for home goods. She orders there constantly.

Walmart stands to gain the most because it runs its own third-party marketplace. Today, though, nobody in my community makes more than about 10% to 15% of their Amazon sales volume on Walmart.

I also shop through ChatGPT a lot now, and Amazon products almost never appear in the results. Most of my searches surface products from Walmart.

How does Amazon blocking AI agents hurt sellers?

Blocking AI agents costs Amazon sellers sales they would have made, because a Muse purchase would have gone through their listings while Amazon still collected its FBA fee. Amazon chose to protect its ad revenue at the sellers’ expense.

This fits a long pattern of decisions that work against sellers. Amazon keeps raising fees, and it now holds seller payouts until 7 to 14 days after delivery.

Returns hurt too. When you ask Amazon to destroy a returned item because shipping it back costs more, Amazon sometimes resells it, and you get dinged when that defective product sells a second time.

Amazon also added a high refund rate badge that appears on listings. Refund fees pile on top of that.

I own Amazon stock, and I am still very vocal about all of this. Amazon is playing defense, and the sellers who rely on it will pay for that defense.

Where do shoppers start product searches now?

Fewer shoppers start their product searches on Amazon every year, and younger shoppers are moving fastest to social platforms. Here is what the latest numbers show.

Toni sees the shift in her own house. Her 17-year-old and 20-year-old start almost every search on TikTok’s shop tab, and most packages arriving at her home come from TikTok Shop.

They still buy on Amazon when TikTok shipping is slow or expensive. Even then, the search started on TikTok.

Her millennial kids, aged 28 to 32, still search and shop mostly on Amazon. Instagram reaches a wider age range than TikTok, which gives Meta, and Muse, an advantage across generations.

Do you still need a good website if AI agents do the shopping?

Your website still matters, because AI agents pull product information from your site and most people still review what they are buying before they pay. Adoption of fully automated shopping will be gradual.

Agentic shopping does change how much your design matters. A buyer working through Muse may never see your homepage, so an ugly Shopify store can still win the sale.

That cuts both ways, since spammy stores can win sales too. Toni wonders whether buying through Muse will make shoppers trust an unknown store more, the same way TikTok Shop’s easy refunds reassure buyers.

To get chosen by an agent, focus on the same things that get you mentioned in AI search. Rank well in search engines, since agents run searches like any other AI, and work on answer engine optimization so AI tools cite your products.

Which other AI shopping agents are launching?

Every major tech company is launching its own agent that can shop for you. Microsoft announced Copilot Shopping, Google announced Remy, and OpenAI just announced an agent called Dots.

Amazon has its own shopping assistant, Rufus, and it is building its own agent. Amazon hopes shoppers start every search inside Amazon.

The odds of an Amazon agent winning are slim. Shoppers will split across five or more agents, and Meta, Google, and Microsoft each start with billions of existing users.

If those agents cannot access Amazon, they will send shoppers to Shopify stores, Walmart, and other retailers instead. That trend will hurt Amazon and its sellers over time.

Is same-day shipping still Amazon’s competitive advantage?

Same-day and next-day shipping are Amazon’s biggest remaining advantage, and competitors are closing the gap. Prime is the main reason both Toni and I still order from Amazon.

Toni does about 95% of her shopping online, and her Amazon orders are down roughly 50% this year. Same-day delivery is the only reason she still orders there.

When she ran out of printer ink, she ordered it on Amazon because it would arrive by 10 p.m. If Amazon could not deliver that fast, she would have used Target delivery or curbside pickup at an office supply store.

Walmart and Target both deliver quickly now, and third-party logistics companies are catching up. Toni recently ordered a coffee table from Wayfair late at night, and it arrived the next day.

Meanwhile Prime keeps getting more expensive. Next-day orders often fail to arrive on time, and customers have little recourse when they do not.

Why are shoppers losing trust in Amazon?

Shoppers are losing trust in Amazon because of hidden reviews, counterfeits, and products that do not match their listings. Amazon increasingly feels like the place to buy commodities and knockoffs.

I stopped doing product research on Amazon when it hid reviews. On mobile I can only see five-star reviews, which also makes it harder to teach my students how to research products.

Amazon restricted reviews to stop scraping tools that resold review data and sentiment. I keep a second account that still shows reviews, though I expect that one to get restricted eventually.

Counterfeits push buyers elsewhere. I bought my camera from B&H Photo because I trusted it would be genuine, after Amazon had problems with counterfeit batteries and SD cards.

A study of supplements sold on Amazon found more than half did not contain what their labels claimed. Toni searched for a Yeti tumbler lid, received a knockoff, and now plans to buy straight from Yeti.

She sees more people choosing to buy from brands they feel connected to. For anything beyond commodities, shoppers increasingly skip Amazon.

How are Amazon sellers doing in 2026?

Most Amazon sellers are struggling, according to Marketplace Pulse’s 2026 seller survey. Only 23% said they were thriving, while 38% described themselves as distressed.

Half of the sellers surveyed named fees as their biggest margin problem. FBA and AWD storage costs keep rising.

The seller base is shrinking. Amazon lost about 84,000 sellers in the last year, and only 165,000 new sellers joined in 2025, down 44% from the year before.

At the 2026 Sellers Summit, many Amazon sellers told me they had doubled down on Amazon. A year earlier they had planned to diversify, and they never got traction on their own sites.

What should Amazon sellers do about AI shopping agents?

Amazon sellers should build a brand and at least one sales channel outside Amazon now, before agentic shopping takes more discovery away from Amazon. Sellers who depend entirely on Amazon will lose discovery as shoppers move to agents that cannot reach it.

Toni’s view is that Amazon is becoming a commodity marketplace. Brand building, content, and customer relationships are what protect a business through these changes.

My own store shows where things are heading. Sales from ChatGPT grew 10 times this year, from a small starting point, and the trend is clear.

Get your products ranking in search and cited in AI answers, because that is where every agent looks. Then give customers a reason to seek out your brand by name, wherever they shop.

Amazon does not care about its sellers. At some point you have to stop putting up with it and diversify.

Frequently asked questions

Can Meta’s Muse buy products on Amazon?

Muse cannot buy from Amazon because Amazon blocked its access to products and checkout. Amazon cited credential safety, though protecting its roughly $68 billion ad business looks like the real motive.

What can Meta’s Muse assistant do?

Muse is Meta’s AI assistant app that completes tasks for you in the background, including handling email, booking appointments, and shopping. It reached 3.4 million downloads in three weeks and became the top app on both major app stores.

Where do Muse users shop instead of Amazon?

Muse users buy from Walmart, Best Buy, Wayfair, and Shopify stores, which all adopted Muse early. Those retailers usually carry the same products sold on Amazon.

Does Amazon have its own AI shopping agent?

Amazon offers a shopping assistant called Rufus and is developing its own agent. Its Buy For Me program already places orders on outside websites for customers.

Will Amazon’s own AI shopping agent win?

Amazon’s odds of owning the dominant shopping agent look slim. Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Meta are all launching agents, and each starts with far more daily users than Amazon’s Rufus.

Are fewer people shopping on Amazon first?

Fewer shoppers now start their product searches on Amazon. That share fell from 61% in 2022 to 56% two years later, and among 16 to 24 year olds it dropped from 40% to 34% in six months.

How much do Americans spend through social commerce?

US shoppers will spend over $100 billion buying directly through social media, up 18% from the previous year. About 117 million Americans, roughly a third of the country, now shop on social platforms.

Why are Amazon sellers leaving the platform?

Rising fees are squeezing Amazon sellers, and half name fees as their biggest margin problem. Amazon lost about 84,000 sellers in the last year, and new seller signups fell 44% in 2025.