"Late last year, some independent online merchants started noticing something strange. Despite never working with Amazon - and in some cases pointedly avoiding it - they were getting orders that seemed to originate from Amazon. Typically, getting your product listed on Amazon is a complicated process, involving either a wholesale relationship or becoming a seller on the platform, and these brands, according to various reports, had done nothing of the sort."
"Amazon, it turned out, had been scraping their listings to include in its AI-powered shopping feature, Rufus. In addition to seeing products from Amazon, customers using Rufus were being shown items from outside stores, sometimes with a button labeled "Buy for me✨," which would trigger an Amazon-powered bot to browse the outside merchant's website, check the item's price and availability, place the order, and handle the payment process."
"A few years ago, the idea that Amazon would automatically buy things from other stores on users' behalf, without those stores' permission, would have sounded bizarre, unrealistic, and brazen. Now, to hear the company tell it, that's just how things are going to work - unless, of course, you're another company attempting to deploy a similar AI shopping feature on Amazon, in which case the company will sue you, accusing you of "covert" and "unauthorized access and trespass.""
Independent merchants experienced orders that appeared to come from Amazon despite never partnering with the company. Amazon's Rufus scraped outside listings and displayed third-party products, offering a 'Buy for me✨' button that launched an Amazon bot to visit merchant sites, verify price and stock, place orders, and process payments. The incidents produced a small number of unauthorized purchases and a sense of violation, though merchants could opt out. The behavior points to an AI-first approach to shopping where companies can autonomously purchase across the web, generating competitive and legal friction as platform owners restrict similar external tools.
Read at Intelligencer
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