"Amazon appears to be doing just that. The e-commerce giant has quietly blocked more OpenAI-related bots from crawling Amazon.com, according to updates in its publicly visible robots.txt file. The change was first spotted by independent e-commerce analyst Juozas Kaziukėnas, who posted a screenshot on LinkedIn showing new disallow rules for several ChatGPT-associated crawlers responsible for model training, web browsing and search. Modern Retail also confirmed the change by reviewing the code that underpins Amazon's e-commerce site."
"The update marks Amazon's latest move to ward off AI agents that could scrape its product pages, monitor prices or even attempt automated purchases. While retailers like Walmart, Target and Etsy are seeing more referral traffic from ChatGPT - on top of inking partnerships with the AI-powered chatbot - Amazon continues to restrict what external AI agents can access, opting instead to steer shoppers toward its own AI offerings."
"Amazon has a financial reason to keep shoppers on its own site, as the company generates roughly $56 billion a year from advertising, a business that depends on people browsing Amazon.com rather than shopping through ChatGPT, where ads can be bypassed. Amazon "doesn't want to just be the back end of the internet," said Scot Wingo, author of the Substack Retailgentic and founder of ReFiBuy, a company that helps brand"
Amazon has updated its publicly visible robots.txt file to block additional OpenAI-related bots from crawling Amazon.com, based on independent reporting and code review. The new disallow rules target ChatGPT-associated crawlers involved in model training, web browsing and search. The changes aim to prevent AI agents from scraping product pages, monitoring prices, or attempting automated purchases. Competing retailers such as Walmart, Target and Etsy are seeing referral traffic and partnerships with ChatGPT, while Amazon restricts external AI access and emphasizes its own AI features. Amazon also relies on roughly $56 billion annually from advertising tied to site browsing.
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