Previous reporting by The Verge revealed that Meta's Muse could be used to effectively block other shoppers from purchasing items for hours.
The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion consignment retailer, announced an update to its bot defense system designed to make it increasingly difficult for AI agents to shop on its platform.
This decision follows a report by The Verge detailing how an AI agent exploited the retailer’s item reserve mechanism. Under the site's rules, items placed in a shopping cart are reserved for 20 minutes. Using Meta’s Muse, The Verge demonstrated that an AI agent could continuously re-add items to the cart immediately after the hold expired, effectively locking out other customers for extended periods.
Following the publication of the story, Chief Technology Officer Luke Friang stated in an email that the company had resolved the specific Muse use case. The RealReal has adjusted its bot defense configuration to significantly hinder agents' ability to log in, add items to a cart, and complete purchases. Friang noted that while agents can still surface listings and direct users to product pages, the company is committed to strengthening these protections as AI-powered online shopping evolves.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding these developments.
As technology companies roll out agents as personalized assistants capable of scheduling and purchasing goods, shopping remains a primary use case. During Meta's Q3 earnings call, the company highlighted that purchasing was the most common use case for Muse, with an average transaction value exceeding $200. The app's rapid adoption, with 10 million users in the U.S. downloading it within 40 days, signals a potential shift in how consumers interact with the web.
However, the rise of robots shopping on behalf of humans threatens to disrupt the current balance of the internet. If consumers increasingly access the web solely through chatbots, businesses risk becoming disconnected from their customer base. Major retailers, most notably Amazon, have already begun blocking agents from shopping on their sites to protect their revenue streams and advertising models.
The influx of AI agents could complicate standard shopping features, such as inventory reserve systems. While a human shopper would likely grow tired of repeatedly adding and removing items from a cart, an AI agent has no such limit. This capability mirrors the type of task one might hire a human assistant to perform, but now it is available to millions of people, prompting retailers to play catch-up in the ongoing arms race.
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