// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
eBay appears to have shut the door on third-party AI agents
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Silicon Valley is promising an AI agent revolution, but retailers and service providers keep blocking them.
Silicon Valley is promising an AI agent revolution, but retailers and service providers keep blocking them.
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eBay appears to have blocked AI agents, including Meta’s Muse, from browsing on the platform — the latest speed bump in the AI agent race.
A reader tells The Verge that for several weeks he’s had his Muse agent browse and curate a daily digest of watches for sale on platforms like eBay, including a link to listings, price, shipping details, and relevant notes about condition or style. This weekend, though, Muse was unable to pull any links or details from eBay, with Muse saying it was blocked from the site. The Verge was able to re-create the experience using other search requests, and in some cases we found that Muse instead directed users to outside sites that mirrored eBay listings.
Shopping is frequently invoked as one area where AI agents can augment or improve the human-driven experience. Technology companies tout the use of agents to book travel, find deals, and even purchase goods and services on behalf of humans. But AI agents are regularly getting blocked from accessing retailers’ sites, calling into question how useful they can really be.