Amazon Faces 'Leader's Dilemma' - Fight AI Shopping Bots or Join Them (cnbc.com) 11
Amazon finds itself caught between two competing impulses as AI shopping agents from OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft mushroom across the e-commerce space -- block them to protect its dominant position, or partner with them to avoid being left behind. The company has largely played defense so far. Amazon recently updated its website code to block external AI agents from crawling it, and as of this week had blocked 47 bots including those from all major AI companies. In November, Amazon sued Perplexity over an agent in the startup's Comet browser that can make purchases on users' behalf, alleging the company concealed its agents to continue scraping Amazon's site. But Amazon's stance appears to be shifting, CNBC reports.
CEO Andy Jassy said on an October earnings call that Amazon expects to partner with third-party agents and has engaged in conversations with some providers. The company is now hiring a corporate development leader to forge strategic partnerships in "agentic commerce." Amazon is also investing in its own tools. The company launched shopping chatbot Rufus last February and has been testing an agent called Buy For Me that can purchase products from other sites within Amazon's app.
CEO Andy Jassy said on an October earnings call that Amazon expects to partner with third-party agents and has engaged in conversations with some providers. The company is now hiring a corporate development leader to forge strategic partnerships in "agentic commerce." Amazon is also investing in its own tools. The company launched shopping chatbot Rufus last February and has been testing an agent called Buy For Me that can purchase products from other sites within Amazon's app.
A Dilemma? (Score:2)
Re:A Dilemma? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not a very gravy friendly business model.
Do A/B testing (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep main Amazon as is, then create an AI version.
3 months later conclude that no one wants Ai-driven purchases, scrap the experiment and still have the old Amazon functional as before.
You'll be ahead of your competition just by not ruining your product.
Re: (Score:3)
The question is less about AI amazon and more about allowing agent access. Let's say you ask Perplexity "What is the best hard drive for my use-case (...)" and it gives you a table with advantages and disadvantages of different drives, and then you ask it for the best prices afterward. Then the next followup could be "Order model B for me on Amazon" and the question is, if Amazon should allow the Perplexity bot to make that order for you or not.
Amazon in principle has an interest to accept orders and benefi
Re: (Score:2)
The cynical view of course is that Perplexity will get to where it accepts ad revenue (bribes) to steer folks to certain brands, effectively cutting Amazon out of the lucritive ad market
I read somewhere that Amazon makes far more money from charging money for ad placement in their results than from actual direct sales.
They also make far more money from allowing the third party slop sellers and forcing them to use Amazon Fulfillment than they do from sales
Its basically that they used selling stuff and a grea
Re: (Score:2)
There are many interesting game theoretic aspects to it. You can certainly see a prisoner's dilemma between being honest on Perplexity's side and on Amazon's side. You can also see the problem with insurance brokers, which seem to act in interest of the user, but benefit from changing insurances often and are unpopular with insurers, because they only get the client as long as they provide the best rate (or possibly the best provision to the broker, which again is a game against the client).
I think in the e
someone else's computer (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't want my personal email on someone else's computer. I don't want to rent someone else's computer. And I sure don't want someone else's computer spending my money. I don't need a personal resource planning 'agent' at all.
That agent is likely easy to influence and will be gamed by advertisers, spammers, and scammers.
Simple solution, force MSRP on bots. (Score:2)