22:42Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
The RealReal Restricts AI Agents from Shopping on Its Site
The RealReal has updated its bot protections to make it more difficult for artificial intelligence (AI) agents to shop on the site. The secondhand luxury clothing retailer aims to prevent abuse of cart reservations. Under the new rules, AI agents are restricted from logging into accounts, adding products to carts and completing checkout. However, they will still be able to find listings.
The problem involves The RealReal’s 20-minute reservation rule. When a user adds a product to their cart, it remains reserved for 20 minutes, during which no one else can buy it. Meta’s Muse agent was instructed to add the product to the cart again as soon as the reservation expired. As a result, those products remained unavailable to other buyers for hours, and sometimes longer.
The company’s chief technology officer, Luke Friang, said the method discovered in connection with Muse has now been blocked. The updated protections make it considerably more difficult for all AI agents to log into accounts, add products to carts and complete purchases. Nevertheless, agents will be able to display The RealReal listings and direct users to product pages. The company says it will also strengthen its safeguards as AI shopping becomes more widespread.
According to Meta, Muse is already used most often for shopping. The company’s Q3 report showed that the average value of purchases made through the agent exceeded $200 (340 manats). The Muse app was downloaded by 10 million people in the US within 40 days. These figures show that shopping with AI agents has become widespread in a short period.
AI agents operating on websites on behalf of shoppers could weaken stores’ direct relationships with customers. Because this method also affects advertising revenue, some retail platforms are creating barriers to automated shopping. Amazon is also among the companies that block agents from making purchases on their sites. A person may not continuously monitor the reservation of a product in their cart, but an agent that operates without interruption can renew it repeatedly.