Amazon is facing pushback from some online retailers who say that it has, through its AI-powered Shop Direct and Buy for Me tools, listed their products on its marketplace without permission, using artificial intelligence tools that scrape information from other websites.
The Shop Direct and Buy for Me tools are designed to help shoppers find products beyond its marketplace, but retailers argue the experiment exposes a deeper tension over data ownership, consent and who really controls the future of online shopping.
In February, Amazon unveiled a feature called Shop Direct, which allows shoppers to browse products sold on other retailers’ websites directly on Amazon.
Some of those listings include a Buy for Me button, an AI-powered agent that can complete purchases on a customer’s behalf by ordering items from third-party sites.
Amazon has described the tools, which are still being tested with a subset of US users, as a way to help customers “find any product they want and need,” including items not sold on Amazon itself.
The company has increasingly relied on third-party merchants over the past decade and says more than 60% of sales on its retail platform now come from independent sellers.
Products listed without consent
But in recent weeks, some businesses have objected to having their products listed on Amazon without consent, according to posts on Reddit and Instagram.
In some cases, retailers reported that Amazon displayed items they had never sold or showed products as available when they were actually out of stock.
“Sounds like a great programme until the agentic AI starts selling customers things you don’t have, all while your shop has no idea it’s sending the wrong items to the customer,” Hitchcock Paper, a Virginia-based stationery store, says in an Instagram post in late December.
The retailer said it realised it had been included in the programme after receiving orders for a stress ball product it does not sell, sent from a buyforme.amazon email address.
Angie Chua, CEO of Bobo Design Studio, says she began receiving orders from Amazon’s Buy for Me agent last week despite never opting in.
Her company sells stationery and journaling accessories through its Shopify website and a physical storefront in Palm Springs, California.
Feeling exploited
Chua told CNBC that after reviewing instructions in an Amazon FAQ, she contacted the company to request the removal of her products.
The listings were taken down within a few days, but she said the episode left her feeling “exploited.”
“We were forced to be dropshippers on a platform that we have made a conscious decision not to be part of,” Chua said, referring to a retail model in which sellers fulfil orders without holding inventory.
Chua added that more than 180 businesses selling through platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace, WooCommerce and Wix have since contacted her to say their products were also listed on Amazon without permission.
Buy for Me remains an “experiment”
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that Shop Direct and Buy for Me help customers find products not sold on Amazon’s site “while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales,” adding that the programmes have “received positive feedback.”
“Businesses can opt out at any time by emailing [email protected], and we remove them from these programs promptly,” the spokesperson says.
Amazon said its system pulls product and pricing information from publicly available data on brand websites and checks that items are in stock and correctly priced.
Amazon has stated that Buy for Me remains an “experiment” and that it does not charge a commission when customers use the feature.
E-commerce agents
In November, the company says the number of products available through Buy for Me had grown from about 65,000 at launch to more than 500,000.
The initiative is part of Amazon’s broader push into e-commerce agents, a fast-emerging technology that could reshape how people shop online.
Companies including OpenAI, Google and Perplexity have rolled out tools that allow consumers to purchase products from retailers and marketplaces without leaving a chatbot interface.
Amazon, meanwhile, has blocked dozens of third-party agents from accessing its site while investing heavily in its own AI tools.
In November, the company sued Perplexity over an agent embedded in the startup’s Comet browser that allows purchases on a user’s behalf.
In the lawsuit, Amazon alleged that Perplexity took steps to “conceal” its agents so they could continue scraping Amazon’s website without approval. Perplexity has described the lawsuit as a “bully tactic.”
Amazon entered the space itself in 2024 with the launch of its shopping chatbot, Rufus, which now includes some agentic capabilities.
Article published by Impact News Wire by John Mulei
