Major tech firms' AI bots encounter obstacles on Amazon marketplace due to ongoing commercial rivalry
In a move that reflects the evolving landscape of e-commerce, Amazon has recently expanded its restrictions on AI access to its marketplace data. This decision is part of a broader trend among e-commerce platforms, as they seek to protect their data and develop their own AI shopping tools.
According to Eric Seufert, an analyst at Mobile Dev Memo, this move serves Amazon's business interests, as third-party AI tools that bypass its storefront could potentially undermine both website traffic and advertising revenue streams. Amazon's advertising business, built around shoppers browsing its marketplace, generated a substantial $15.7 billion in Q2 2025, marking a 22% growth.
The latest updates aim to prevent artificial intelligence companies from scraping e-commerce data from Amazon's marketplace. The updated code explicitly prohibits these companies from scraping data, following previous restrictions implemented at least a month earlier against crawlers from Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity, and Google's Project Mariner agents.
Amazon has updated its robots.txt file to block AI-related crawlers from six additional technology firms, including Meta, Google, Huawei, Mistral, on August 21, 2025. This action comes after Shopify, Amazon's primary competitor in e-commerce technology, introduced warning language to merchants' robots.txt files rather than outright blocking specific companies.
The effectiveness of these restrictions depends on voluntary compliance from AI companies. Karsten Weide, a marketing analyst, predicts that blocking personal shopping bots will be a losing defensive battle in the long run. He argues that a lot of consumer commerce will go through agents, potentially reshaping advertising strategies.
This battle over AI access to e-commerce data reflects deeper questions about the future of online shopping and advertising. McKinsey identified agentic AI as a top trend reshaping marketing back in July 27, 2025. The developments signal potential disruption to existing digital advertising models that rely on open data access and traditional customer acquisition funnels.
It's important to note that there is no publicly available information as of September 2025 indicating which AI companies, besides Anthropic, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's Project Mariner, have had their access to Amazon Marketplace data restricted since August 2025.
The timeline of these events includes the introduction of robots.txt warnings by Shopify in July 2024 and Amazon's AI system beginning scanning brand websites for compliance violations in May 16, 2025. These actions come amidst concerns about the accountability of AI companies regarding the exploitation of children through predatory AI products, as recently warned by US Attorneys General from 44 jurisdictions.
As the world of e-commerce continues to evolve, it's clear that AI will play a significant role in shaping the future. Whether through developing AI shopping tools like Rufus chatbot and "buy-for-me" features, or through restrictions on AI access to marketplace data, Amazon is at the forefront of this transformation.
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