Meta built an AI agent called Muse. Amazon banned it from their website. You're supposed to care about this because one app you'll never use can't access one website you already regret visiting.
The standoff exists. Meta wants Muse to scrape Amazon's product listings so it can tell you which blender to buy. Amazon said no. Shocking development: a company that spent two decades building a recommendation algorithm doesn't want a competitor's AI doing the same job for free.
Tech journalists are calling this "a sign of things to come." They mean more companies will block each other's AI agents. They're right. Every platform will ban every other platform's bot. The internet will become a series of walled gardens where AI agents stand outside the gates like disappointed Jehovah's Witnesses.
Meta positioning Muse as a "personal agent" remains funny. Your personal agent can't enter the largest online retailer in America. Imagine hiring a personal shopper who's banned from every store in the mall. That's the product Meta's marketing team is currently pretending is revolutionary.
The article says Muse shows "signs of becoming a hit." Those signs must be invisible. Or they're using the same metrics that said the metaverse was the future. Meta's track record on predicting hits includes spending $10 billion on an empty cartoon office building nobody wanted to visit.
Amazon's blocking Muse because they don't want Meta's AI scraping their data. Fair enough. Meta's entire business model is scraping everyone's data and selling it. Amazon would prefer to keep the scraping and selling in-house. Two surveillance companies fighting over who gets to monitor your shopping habits. The future is efficient.
Retail traders will somehow find a way to lose money on this news. They'll buy calls on Meta because "AI is the future" and ignore that their AI can't access the website they use to buy protein powder and phone chargers. By next week they'll be posting loss porn and blaming market manipulation instead of admitting they invested in a shopping assistant that isn't allowed to go shopping.
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