Amazon faces 'leader's dilemma' — fight AI shopping bots or join them

Amazon faces 'leader's dilemma' — fight AI shopping bots or join them

Agents like OpenAI's Instant Checkout and Perplexity's Instant Buy threaten to reshape the e-commerce landscape.

Amazon Faces 'Leader's Dilemma' - Fight AI Shopping Bots or Join Them

Amazon finds itself caught between two competing impulses as AI shopping agents from OpenAI, Google, Perplexity and Microsoft mushroom across the e-commerce space -- block them to protect its dominant position, or partner with them to avoid being left behind. The company has largely played defense so far. Amazon recently updated its website code to block external AI agents from crawling it, and as of this week had blocked 47 bots including those…