Amazon Blocks Meta’s Muse and Accuses Perplexity of Misleading a Court
Amazon (find out more) blocks Muse, and Meta's users now hit a popup saying an unauthorised AI agent has breached its terms. On the same day, Amazon accused Perplexity of telling a federal appeals court something its own servers contradicted. Both moves lean on contract law, not hacking law.
September 21, 2026 - 3:59 pm
Credit: Amazon
Amazon fought AI shopping agents on two fronts on Monday. It blocked Muse, Meta’s new AI assistant, from Amazon.com and also filed an amended complaint against Perplexity, accusing the company of misleading a federal appeals court.
The Block
The block came first. People who sent Muse to shop on Amazon over the weekend began seeing a popup:
"Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed."
Amazon later told Bloomberg that blocking began on Sunday evening. Meta had declined a request to take Amazon out of Muse.
What Amazon Says is Wrong with Muse
Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson set out the company’s position in an emailed statement to Bloomberg:
"We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate."
She compared it to food delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for. Online travel agencies and airlines work the same way, she added. "Agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations, and we’ve requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience."
The specific objections are narrower than the statement suggests. Amazon told GeekWire that Meta never said Muse would access the store. The agent does not identify itself while browsing, Amazon says, and it appears to capture and store customer credentials.
Georgia Hennessy reported for Business Insider that Amazon also accuses Muse of scraping account data. Agents bypass the personalisation built into Amazon’s shopping pages, the company told her, showing people products that ignore their own history.
Meta Has Addressed Some Concerns
Meta has answered the credentials point in advance, though not the block itself. Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods”, the company said in its launch announcement. Anything a user shares goes into secure storage, it said, so the agent can use it without seeing it. Meta did not respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg, Business Insider or GeekWire.
The Two Companies Are Business Partners
None of this is happening between strangers. Amazon products have been purchasable inside Facebook and Instagram since 2023. Meta also signed a multibillion-dollar deal in April to run agentic AI workloads on Amazon’s cloud. Amazon told GeekWire it was in direct conversation with Meta, and declined to say whether it would sue.
Meta launched Muse on September 8th. It books, buys and fills in forms. Within a week it was the number one free app in Apple’s US App Store, ahead of ChatGPT.
The Second Front, Filed the Same Day
Jason Del Rey, who writes the retail newsletter The Aisle, flagged on X that Amazon filed an amended complaint against Perplexity on the same day. It runs to 41 pages. It pleads computer fraud, the California computer data access statute, and tortious interference with contract.
The new material concerns Comet for iOS. Perplexity launched that version on March 18, 2026, nine days after the district court enjoined it from using Amazon’s cloud services.