Home Depot, Meta in talks on how Muse AI agents identify themselves

Home Depot's stance sits between outright blocking and full embrace of consumer AI agents. Amazon has barred Meta's Muse from its marketplace over identification, while Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, and Shopify have announced integrations or openness. Brown's comments suggest the retailer's concern is less about the technology itself than about preserving its relationship with customers, including frequent shoppers who belong to its loyalty program.

The retailer is also applying AI on the defensive side. After critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used in an estimated 70% of websites, were discovered with help from OpenAI and US cybersecurity officials urged updates, Brown said the hours after the warning were "a little hectic" but the main website was not affected. A couple of smaller operating units had to plug vulnerabilities, including an internal job application system taken down for about an hour to patch.

Home Depot has access to Anthropic's Mythos AI model, though it was not granted early access via Project Glasswing, slots Brown said were largely reserved for banks and cybersecurity firms. The models found a few things to fix in its code but also some false positives, and Brown said the speed to fix a vulnerability has to be driven down to hours.