Amazon blocks Meta's Muse after app tops Apple's App Store

Muse's breakout comes as Meta has struggled to compete with frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, making it a much needed consumer win. The company released Muse just as Anthropic and OpenAI launched cheaper versions of some of their models, and Apple recently rolled out its revamped Siri in its newest iOS update. Amazon's block, meanwhile, follows its lawsuit against Perplexity over the Comet AI tool, which could access Amazon accounts much like Muse does; Amazon recently lost a ruling on that claim after the Ninth Circuit found users were ultimately choosing to access Amazon via Perplexity's bot, and it is still fighting the issue.

Amazon's own stance is not absolute: it offers a shopping agent called Buy for Me, says brands can opt out but are automatically opted in, and CEO Andy Jassy has said the company is exploring AI shopping agent partnerships with third parties. Meta's own privacy record is likely to shape how consumers weigh the trade-off, since Muse requires access to sensitive information like bank accounts to act on a user's behalf, and Meta has faced multiple proposed class-action lawsuits over its smart glasses, including one alleging footage was sent to third-party human reviewers; Meta has disputed the allegations.

The immediate test is whether Amazon's access rules hold up under the same legal scrutiny as its Perplexity claim, and whether other large platforms follow with blocks of their own. For role-based readers, the stakes look different for consumers deciding how much account access to trade away, for retailers weighing whether to open APIs to agents, and for small service and commerce apps that may face pressure to comply if distribution aggregators demand higher fees.