Amazon’s AI shopping tool sparks backlash from some online retailers

Amazon It has angered some online retailers, who say they refuse to allow their products to be listed on the e-commerce giant’s expanding marketplace.

In February, the company announced “Shop Direct” a feature that allows consumers to browse products on other brands’ sites on Amazon. Some of these items include a labeled button. “Buy For Me” An AI agent that can purchase items from other websites on behalf of the shopper.

Amazon has pitched the services, which are in testing for some U.S. users, as a way for shoppers to “find any product they want and need,” including items not available on its site. Over the last decade, Amazon has increasingly turned to third-party sellers for products and says more than 60% of sales on its retail platform now come from independent sellers.

According to the report, in recent weeks some businesses have begun to object to their products being sold on Amazon without their permission. Posts about reddit And instagram. Retailers said in some cases the program resulted in Amazon listing products that it never sold or were out of stock.

Hitchcock Paper, a Virginia-based stationery store, said: “Agent AI sounds like a great program until it starts selling customers things you don’t have and your store has no idea it’s sending the wrong items to the customer.” an Instagram post In late December.

The paper retailer said it discovered it was part of the scheme when it began receiving orders from its “buyforme.amazon” email address for a stress ball product it didn’t sell.

Bobo Design Studio CEO Angie Chua said she started taking orders from Amazon’s Buy For Me rep last week, even though she wasn’t involved in the program. His company sells stationery and daily accessories through itself Shopify website and a store in Palm Springs, California.

Chua told CNBC this based on Amazon’s instructions. FAQ He reached out to the company to demand that it recall its products on its website. The listings were removed within days, but she said the experience left her feeling “exploited.”

“We were forced to be a dropshipper on a platform that we made a conscious decision not to be a part of,” Chua said, referring to the online retail model that involves selling products to shoppers without storing inventory.

180+ businesses selling their products on Shopify, Squarespace, WooCommerce, Wix and other platforms contacted Chua and shared that their products were also listed on Amazon without their permission.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that Shop Direct and Buy for Me help customers find products not sold on its site, “help businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales,” and that the programs “have received positive feedback.”

“Businesses can opt out of the program at any time by emailing branddirect@amazon.com and we remove them from these programs immediately,” the spokesperson said. The company said product and pricing information is taken from publicly available information on a brand’s website, and Amazon’s system checks to make sure the product is in stock and the price is correct.

Amazon said Buy For Me remains an “experiment” and that it does not charge commissions when customers use it to make purchases. The company in November in question The number of products available through Buy For Me has grown from 65,000 at launch to over 500,000.

It’s all part of Amazon’s push toward e-commerce agents, a technology that could potentially disrupt the way people shop online. Companies including OpenAI Google and Perplexity have released features that allow consumers to purchase items from retailers and online marketplaces without leaving the chatbot window.

Amazon has blocked dozens of intermediaries from accessing its site while investing in homegrown AI tools, and in November the company sued Perplexity over an intermediary that allowed the startup to make purchases on a user’s behalf in the Comet browser.

In the complaint, Amazon alleged that Perplexity took steps to “disguise” its representatives so they could continue scraping Amazon’s website without its approval. Perplexity called the lawsuit a “bully tactic.”

In 2024, Amazon launched its own shopping chatbot called Rufus, which now has some brokerage capabilities.

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