On Sunday night, 20 September, Amazon cut Meta's Muse assistant off from Amazon.com with a popup: "Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed." Next afternoon, Shopify's Tobi Lütke opened Shop Pay checkout to that assistant on every Shopify store.
That popup is doing legal work. Amazon won an injunction against Perplexity's Comet agent in March; on 4 August the Ninth Circuit vacated it, holding that the user, not the AI company, "accesses" Amazon's computers, Perplexity's servers never touching them. "Amazon is simply unlikely to succeed in its attempt to regulate access by invoking the CFAA and the CDAFA," the panel wrote, sending Amazon in a footnote to "private terms of service for its users" instead. Rehearing was refused on 10 September; ten days later Amazon barred Muse on the agreement the court preserved, not the statute it struck.
Shopify is opening a rail it will not size: $115.57B of GMV in the June quarter, up 32%, its best in five quarters, and no disclosed Shop Pay share, take rate or start date.
Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping — 21 September 2026
The block and popup text are GeekWire's, with Bloomberg and TechCrunch. Appeal quotations are the Ninth Circuit's opinion, No. 26-1444; the rehearing denial is Courthouse News. Lütke's wording is his own post. Shopify's June-quarter figures are its 5 August release, which omits Shop Pay.
