Amazon’s latest experiment in AI-driven shopping – a feature called “Buy for Me” – is revealing a troubling side of agentic commerce. This feature allows Amazon’s AI to do more than just recommend products; it actually purchases items on customers’ behalf from other brands’ websites. On the surface, it seems convenient: shoppers can discover and buy items from independent brands without ever leaving Amazon’s app. But for the brands whose products are suddenly showing up on Amazon without permission, Buy for Me has become a wake-up call. By scraping public product data, auto-generating Amazon listings, and acting as an intermediary buyer, Amazon is testing a model of AI-driven commerce that puts platform control above merchant consent. This raises urgent questions about who controls product information, who “owns” the customer relationship, and what rights a platform has to execute sales in the age of AI shopping agents.

What Is Amazon Buy For Me and How Does It Work?

Buy for Me is part of Amazon’s BuyForMe program, an AI-powered shopping feature within Amazon’s app that Amazon began piloting in 2025. Amazon’s Buy for Me is currently in beta and available to a subset of U.S. customers using the Amazon Shopping app on iOS and Android. It allows Amazon users to purchase products sold on a brand’s website, directly through the Amazon interface. Amazon’s AI powers this feature, automating the process of purchasing from a brand’s website within Amazon’s app. In practice, Amazon’s system finds products that are not sold on Amazon’s marketplace but are available on independent brand sites (for example, a small Shopify-powered store). It then creates a listing on Amazon’s store for those products, labelled as coming from “other brands.” Shoppers might see these listings mixed into their Amazon search results with a special “Buy for Me” button. Branded items from other stores and shop brand sites directly can be found via the search bar, and these are shown in a separate section of relevant results. Importantly, these are not third-party sellers who signed up for Amazon – they are automatically added by Amazon’s AI as part of Amazon’s shopping experience within Amazon’s app. Amazon’s shopping experience is expanded by integrating external brand websites into Amazon’s store, allowing customers to purchase products from other sites without leaving Amazon’s app.

From the shopper’s perspective, using Buy for Me feels similar to a normal Amazon purchase. They can add the product to their Amazon cart and check out using their Amazon account, without visiting the brand’s own site. However, the item isn’t stocked or shipped by Amazon. Behind the scenes, Amazon’s AI assistant acts as a go-between: it takes the order details and, acting on the customer’s behalf, places an order on the brand’s website. Before creating a listing, Amazon’s system checks product and pricing information on the brand’s website to ensure accuracy. Amazon’s AI securely transmits the customer’s encrypted personal and payment details to the brand’s website to complete the transaction. Essentially, Amazon itself becomes a “customer” of the independent merchant, executing the purchase with the customer’s information (which Amazon securely provides from the user’s saved details). Once Amazon completes the purchase on a customer’s behalf, the customer receives an auto-generated email (order confirmation) from the brand store. The merchant then fulfills the order and ships it directly to the Amazon shopper. Delivery, returns, and customer service for purchases made through Buy for Me are managed by the brand store, not Amazon, and some merchants may use Shopify shipping notification emails for order updates.

In simpler terms: Amazon’s Buy for Me lets customers purchase products on Amazon for an item that Amazon doesn’t sell. Amazon’s system will buy it from the brand’s site for you, so you never have to leave Amazon. Customers can link directly to brand’s websites or purchase items from shop brand sites through Amazon’s Buy for Me feature. The checkout process includes applicable taxes, and Amazon does not charge a commission for purchases made through Buy for Me during its beta phase. The orders tab in Amazon’s app allows customers to track these purchases, but separate orders from different brands or stores are not displayed together. The appeal for users is clear – one-stop shopping and Amazon’s checkout convenience applied to almost any product on the web. Amazon even extends its customer protections (like its A-to-Z guarantee and unified order tracking) to these purchases. For Amazon, it keeps customers inside the Amazon ecosystem and potentially expands product selection infinitely by tapping into other retailers’ catalogs. Amazon plans to expand the Buy for Me feature to more customers and brands over time, further increasing the reach of Amazon’s shopping experience. But for the merchants whose products are being bought “for” customers by Amazon, the process is anything but straightforward.

An AI Middleman in Action

To make Buy for Me possible, Amazon employs what it calls “agentic AI capabilities”. Agentic commerce refers to autonomous AI agents that act independently on behalf of customers to accomplish shopping goals, going beyond traditional AI by making decisions and completing transactions without user intervention. This means the AI isn’t just answering questions – it’s taking actions online. The AI scours a brand’s public website for product and pricing information, likely using web crawling or integrations, and generates a product listing on Amazon based on that data. Amazon’s system checks verify product information and stock status by cross-referencing the brand’s website data before displaying or updating listings. It will periodically check the brand’s site for price changes or stock availability so it can update the Amazon listing. (However, as many merchants discovered, this process isn’t perfect – more on that below.) When an Amazon customer clicks “Buy for Me,” the AI proceeds to simulate a customer checkout on the brand’s site:

• It adds the item to the website’s cart, just as a regular shopper would.
• It uses the Amazon-held payment details and shipping address of the customer to fill in the order form. (Amazon has stated that it encrypts and securely transmits this info, so the merchant never sees the actual credit card numbers – they simply receive a normal order paid via a card.)
• The order is placed on the merchant’s website, with a unique Amazon-generated email address (something like xyz123@buyforme.amazon.com) as the contact. This allows Amazon to monitor the order status and handle communication, while shielding the customer’s personal email.

After this, the merchant’s own system processes the order. From the merchant’s viewpoint, an order from a customer has appeared out of nowhere – often flagged with that strange @buyforme.amazon.com email. The merchant will pack and ship the product to the address provided (which is the real customer’s address). Amazon typically sends the customer shipping updates through its app or email, and if the customer has an issue or wants to return the item, Amazon facilitates that (often by providing return labels or support via its customer service). In effect, Amazon acts as an agent and a buffer: the customer still goes through Amazon for service, and the merchant is order fulfillment that Amazon routed to them. fulfilling an order

Crucially, all of this happens without the merchant ever having listed their product on Amazon themselves. The listings are auto-generated by Amazon’s AI; the merchant didn’t write the title or description on Amazon, didn’t set up an Amazon seller account, and didn’t explicitly agree to sell on Amazon’s marketplace. This is unlike any traditional Amazon marketplace transaction, where the seller actively participates. Buy for Me blurs the line – the merchant becomes an unwitting drop-shipper fulfilling an Amazon-placed order. Notably, Buy for Me is currently a beta program and is still in testing, which has led to issues for small businesses regarding control and potential legal risks.

Listed Without Consent: A Marketplace Without Independent Sellers?

When Amazon rolled out Buy for Me, the most shocking part for many merchants was that they were listed on Amazon without knowing it. The program effectively created Amazon product listings for items on external websites, even if those merchants have never sold on Amazon. These listings show up under an “Shop Direct” or “Buy for Me” category in Amazon search results, giving the appearance that the products are part of Amazon’s store. In reality, the merchant is not a seller in Amazon’s marketplace; they never onboarded, never accepted terms, and never agreed to Amazon using their product info.

Many small businesses (particularly those on Shopify or direct-to-consumer sites) took to social media and forums, comparing notes on this mysterious program. Entire catalogs of products – sometimes hundreds or thousands of SKUs – had been replicated on Amazon via BuyForMe. One children’s apparel brand owner searched her brand name on Amazon and was shocked to see over 4,000 products from her merchant site listed, even though she had never partnered with Amazon. In another case, a digital art shop found that even intangible items like gift cards had been listed by Amazon’s bot, which obviously made no sense for Amazon to sell. The scale of this auto-listing experiment became clear when an Amazon spokesperson later confirmed that over 500,000 items were included in BuyForMe by the end of 2025 (up from about 65,000 when the beta launched in April of that year).

From Amazon’s perspective, they positioned BuyForMe as a win-win: a way to “help customers discover brands and products not currently sold in Amazon’s store, while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.” Amazon claims to have received positive feedback and positive feedback from some businesses about these programs, using this as justification despite the controversy. In theory, a small merchant might get sales from Amazon users who would otherwise never find their site. Amazon also noted that it wasn’t charging any commission or fees for these orders, unlike standard marketplace sales – effectively, they were acting like an extra shopper on the merchant’s site. And if any merchant didn’t like it, Amazon pointed out they could opt out at any time (by emailing a special support address to request removal from the program). Amazon claims to remove businesses from these programs promptly after opting out, but many merchants have not successfully opted out or found the process transparent.

However, to the merchants, this “ask forgiveness, not permission” approach felt like a profound overreach. No seller sign-up, no contract, no consent – Amazon just flipped a switch and enrolled them. The opt-out mechanism, buried in an Amazon FAQ, meant many only learned of it after they had already experienced problems. As one retailer put it, “Our products were in Amazon’s store without our knowledge. It’s like waking up to find someone built a kiosk with your goods in a mall you never rented space in.”

When Good Intentions Go Wrong: Merchant Outrage and Real Problems

The lack of consent is a principle issue, but equally important are the practical problems that arose from these unauthorized listings. By acting on second-hand data and automating purchases, Amazon’s AI introduced errors and confusion that merchants had to clean up:

• Out-of-stock items and outdated info: Because the AI scraped product info at some point in time, it sometimes listed products that the brand no longer had available. Customers placed orders on Amazon for items that didn’t exist in the merchant’s inventory. This led to merchants scrambling to cancel orders or explain to angry buyers that the product was unavailable. The very first clues many got about Buy for Me were these unexpected orders for long-gone products. Often, these orders arrived via an auto-generated email address created by Amazon, which made it difficult for merchants to immediately recognize or verify the legitimacy of the order.
• Mismatched products and descriptions: Some merchants reported that Amazon’s auto-generated listings didn’t always match the product perfectly. In one case, a customer thought they were buying a large version of a stress-ball toy (based on Amazon’s listing), but the merchant only sold a smaller size – and that’s what was shipped. The AI had apparently misinterpreted or merged product data, resulting in the wrong item being delivered. The customer blamed the small business for “sending the wrong product,” hurting the brand’s reputation through no fault of their own.
• Incorrect pricing or terms: A few merchants saw Amazon display prices that didn’t match their current pricing – potentially a caching issue or a misunderstanding like showing a wholesale/bulk price or an old sale price. This could mean customers were charged a different amount than the product actually costs on the site, leading to confusion and potential loss for someone (either the customer pays more than they should, or the merchant has to decide whether to honor a lower price they never set on Amazon).
• Customer confusion over who they bought from: Several merchants noted that customers thought they had ordered from Amazon directly. The Amazon-generated product pages, while labeled as from “other brands,” still looked like typical Amazon pages to many shoppers. So when an issue arose – wrong item, delayed shipment, etc. – some buyers contacted Amazon support expecting resolution, while others contacted the merchant (since the package ultimately came from the merchant’s warehouse). Small businesses suddenly found themselves fielding customer service issues caused by Amazon’s system, often having to explain, “We didn’t list our product on Amazon; Amazon’s AI did this.” This scenario put brand trust at risk. A customer who has a bad experience might leave a negative review or lose faith in the brand, not realizing the disconnect in the sales channel. Additionally, some merchants use Shopify shipping notification emails to communicate with customers, but when orders are placed via Amazon’s Buy for Me, this can cause confusion—customers may receive both Amazon and Shopify notifications, making it unclear who is responsible for the order and shipment.
• Returns and fulfillment burden: Because the orders are fulfilled by the merchants, any returns or exchanges fall to them as well. One major headache was that if Amazon’s info was wrong (say, the wrong size was listed) and the customer wanted a return, the small merchant had to handle the return shipping and refund. Amazon wasn’t automatically compensating these errors; in effect, the merchant eats the cost or inconvenience, unless they escalate a complaint to Amazon. Some merchants reported offering refunds or replacements to appease customers, essentially cleaning up the AI’s mistakes. Offering free return labels in these situations can help mitigate disputes, improve customer satisfaction, and reduce the risk of chargebacks, but it also adds to the merchant’s operational costs.
• Operational strain and inventory management: A few artisan or very small-scale sellers worried, what if this took off suddenly? If Amazon’s algorithm decided to push their product and they got a spike of orders, could they even handle it? One jewelry maker said, “If suddenly there were 100 orders, I couldn’t necessarily manage… I should be asked about that. This is my business.” For micro-businesses, being unknowingly featured on the world’s largest store is a stress-test they never signed up for.
• Policy and partnership conflicts: At least one merchant pointed out that they carry other independent brands’ products in their store, and some of those brands explicitly forbid selling on Amazon (to maintain exclusivity or brand positioning). By Amazon pulling those products onto its site via this merchant’s catalog, it could put the merchant in breach of agreements with their partners. Others mentioned the unauthorized use of their product photography and descriptions (often copyrighted content) by Amazon’s listings, raising intellectual property concerns. It felt like Amazon assumed anything publicly visible online was free to reuse commercially.

All these issues fuel the outrage, but the prevailing sentiment from merchants is less about any single order gone wrong and more about loss of control. These entrepreneurs carefully cultivate their brand image, customer experience, and sales channels. Suddenly they woke up to find their brand presented on Amazon in a way they didn’t choose, with content they didn’t vet, and funneling orders in a manner that cut them out of the loop. Even those who initially saw extra orders roll in (and thought “hey, new sales!”) quickly grew wary when errors and complaints surfaced. As one affected seller said, “When things started to go wrong, there was no system set up by Amazon to resolve it. It’s just: We set this up for you, you should be grateful… now you deal with it.” That feeling of powerlessness – that Amazon can reach into their business and meddle with how products are sold – is what really underlines the “dark side” of this agentic commerce experiment.

Execution Without Consent: A Dangerous Precedent

Beyond the immediate headaches, Buy for Me set a concerning precedent: it breaks the assumption that merchants control how and where their products are sold. This is essentially Amazon saying it can act as an agentic buyer, and by doing so, it can create a “marketplace” of products without the sellers’ participation. While Amazon argues it’s just making purchases like a customer would, the scale and automation changes everything.

Amazon’s approach taps into the concept of “agentic commerce” – where an AI agent can browse the web, find products, and execute purchases on behalf of a user. Agentic commerce is likely to become a major trend, with AI assistants handling shopping tasks end-to-end. However, this also means a large platform could leverage agentic AI to pull products into its ecosystem without permission, effectively rewriting the rules of ecommerce.

In traditional ecommerce, if a merchant didn’t list their product on Amazon, it wouldn’t appear on Amazon. With Buy for Me, that barrier disappears. Amazon’s system can scrape the merchant’s public product data, generate a listing on Amazon, and initiate purchases through the merchant’s site. This is a powerful shift: it means any online store could become “shoppable” through Amazon’s interface, even if the merchant never intended it.

From a merchant’s perspective, this is unsettling because it takes away their ability to choose sales channels. Many merchants avoid Amazon because of brand control, pricing strategy, or marketplace fees. Others have exclusive agreements that prevent selling on certain platforms. Buy for Me overrides those strategic decisions, effectively saying: if your product is online, Amazon can facilitate its sale.

For the ecommerce industry, this raises questions about what future norms should look like. Should platforms be allowed to automatically list and purchase products from other stores without permission? Should merchants have legal or technical protections? Or will the open web simply become a de facto catalog for dominant platforms with AI agents?

The Universal Commerce Protocol: Consent-Based Agentic Commerce

Is there a better way to harness AI in shopping without trampling on merchant consent? Many in the industry believe so, and they’re rallying around an alternative approach called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). UCP is a newly introduced open standard designed specifically for agentic commerce, but unlike Amazon’s closed experiment, UCP is built on explicit, machine-readable consent from merchants.

Under the Universal Commerce Protocol, merchants voluntarily expose their product data and purchase workflows via a standardized API or manifest. In plain terms, a brand can signal to AI agents: “Here’s how you can work with my store if you want to buy something.” This manifest includes real-time product details (pricing, stock, descriptions), rules for checkout (available shipping methods, tax calculations, promo codes, etc.), and how to actually submit an order and payment. Because it’s machine-readable and standardized, any AI shopping assistant that speaks UCP can understand and transact with the store only in the ways the merchant allows.

Several big names are backing UCP – it was co-developed by Google along with partners like Shopify, Walmart, Target, and others. The reason is clear: they envision a future where AI shopping agents become common, and they want a level playing field where retailers have control and buyers have choice. In a UCP scenario, if a shopper asks an AI assistant (say Google’s chatbot or some voice assistant) to buy a product, the assistant would search for merchants that support UCP for that product. It could perhaps find multiple options and compare prices or loyalty benefits. When it goes to execute the purchase, it would use the UCP interface to do so seamlessly. Importantly:

• The merchant remains the “seller of record”. The sale happens as if on the merchant’s site (just automated). The merchant sets the terms of sale, and they know an AI agent is checking out under a real customer’s authorization.
  
• The merchant likely gets to retain the customer relationship (for example, the protocol could allow the real customer email to be shared in a secure way, or at least not hide the brand behind an alias).
  
• Because the data comes directly from the merchant’s feed, the product info is accurate and up-to-date. The AI doesn’t have to scrape webpages and risk errors; it’s getting official data.
  
• If a merchant doesn’t want certain products sold via third-party agents or has certain conditions (like “don’t allow discount codes beyond X” or “limit 2 per customer”), those rules can be encoded in the protocol. The AI must respect those rules to complete the purchase successfully.
  
• In short, consent and control are baked in. Merchants opt in to UCP and thereby agree to let participating AI agents facilitate sales under agreed-upon rules. If they opt out, the AI should leave them alone.
  

It’s a very different philosophy from Amazon’s Buy for Me. One is “Let’s collaborate via open standards”, the other is “We’ll do it anyway, try to stop us.” UCP is still brand new (announced in early 2026), and Amazon was notably absent from its supporters. That’s not surprising – Amazon typically prefers its own closed ecosystem. In fact, while Walmart and Target jumped on the UCP bandwagon (signaling their interest in being more open), Amazon has shown no sign of adopting UCP or similar standards. Instead, Amazon has been building features like Buy for Me and its AI assistant (nicknamed “Rufus” internally) to strengthen its walled garden.

Consent vs. Power: Two Visions for AI Shopping

The clash between Amazon’s Buy for Me and UCP highlights two different visions for the future of agentic commerce:

• Amazon’s vision: A closed ecosystem where Amazon is the hub, and customers can buy anything without leaving Amazon. Merchants are pulled in automatically, and Amazon controls the customer experience and the shopping relationship. This maximizes convenience and keeps customers in Amazon’s domain.
• UCP’s vision: An open, consent-based ecosystem where merchants opt in, control their product data, and allow AI agents to transact under clear rules. AI shopping assistants can work across the web without one platform dominating the relationship.

For consumers, both visions promise convenience. But for merchants, the difference is huge. Amazon’s approach removes consent and control, while UCP is designed to preserve both. The adoption of UCP may determine whether agentic commerce becomes a collaborative standard or a platform-controlled power play.

New Reality for Merchants: Product and Pricing Information as Open Invitations

Buy for Me has made one thing clear: in the era of AI agents, publicly available product data may be treated as an invitation to transact. Merchants who assumed that listing products on their own site meant controlling distribution are now facing a new reality. If your site is public, an AI agent can potentially scrape your catalog, present it elsewhere, and execute purchases on behalf of users.

This changes the equation for merchants. It forces brands to think about:

• How to maintain control over product data accuracy and representation across platforms
• Whether to adopt consent-based standards like UCP to manage AI-driven transactions
• How to protect customer relationships when AI agents act as intermediaries

Merchants may need new technical or legal tools to assert their preferences. In the past, being “off Amazon” was a choice. With agentic commerce, that choice may become harder to enforce unless standards like UCP become widely adopted.

The Technology Behind Buy for Me

Amazon’s Buy for Me relies on a combination of web crawling, automation, and secure data transfer. Amazon’s AI agent collects product data from external sites, generates listings, monitors for updates, and executes checkout flows. This is essentially a sophisticated automation system built at Amazon scale.

Key components include:

• Data scraping: Pulling product names, descriptions, prices, and images from public product pages.
• Listing generation: Creating Amazon listings based on scraped data, without merchant involvement.
• Order automation: Simulating a customer purchase on the merchant’s site using Amazon’s stored customer payment and shipping details.
• Proxy identity: Using Amazon-generated email addresses to manage communication and track orders.

This technology shows how quickly AI agents can turn product discovery into action. It also shows why consent-based protocols like UCP matter: without clear standards, platforms can deploy these tools in ways that shift power away from merchants.

Amazon’s Buy for Me program may be a beta experiment today, but it offers a preview of what agentic commerce could become. The future of AI shopping will likely depend on whether the industry embraces consent-based standards or allows dominant platforms to set the rules unilaterally. For merchants, the lesson is clear: prepare now for AI-driven transactions, protect product data integrity, and consider how to maintain customer relationships when the “buyer” may be an AI agent.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Amazon’s Buy for Me feature?

Amazon’s Buy for Me is an AI-powered feature within the Amazon Shopping app that allows customers to buy products from other brands’ websites without leaving Amazon. If Amazon doesn’t sell an item directly, it can still show it in Amazon search results and let the customer purchase it with a “Buy for Me” button. Amazon’s system then places the order on the brand’s website on the customer’s behalf.

Do merchants have to sign up for Buy for Me?

No. That’s the controversy. Amazon automatically lists products from external sites without merchants signing up, onboarding, or giving consent. Merchants are included by default unless they opt out. Amazon scrapes publicly available product data and creates listings without a contract or seller agreement.

Does Amazon take a commission on Buy for Me sales?

During the beta phase, Amazon stated it does not take a commission for Buy for Me purchases. The merchant receives payment for any orders Amazon places on their site (just like a regular customer sale, minus whatever payment processing fees they normally pay). However, Amazon does not take a marketplace commission on top – it’s not like a 15% fee as in a typical Amazon sale. Amazon’s “gain” is keeping the customer on its platform and potentially earning their loyalty (and capturing data). The merchant gets the revenue from the product sale, but they didn’t explicitly agree to Amazon being a sales channel.

Is it legal for Amazon to list and sell products from other websites without permission?

Legality in this context is a gray area because Amazon isn’t stealing the products; it’s acting as a customer would. If you have a public online store, anyone (including a bot) can technically place orders. Amazon is leveraging that, along with publicly available information. There’s no specific law against listing information found on the web, especially if it’s factual like a product name and price. However, there could be intellectual property questions (using product images or descriptions without permission) and contractual issues (for example, if a brand’s terms of service prohibit automated scraping or resale, Amazon could be in breach of those terms). No major legal action has been taken publicly as of now, but many affected brands feel it’s unethical. It’s possible this area will attract regulatory scrutiny if it grows, since it touches on competition and consumer transparency as well.

Why are merchants so upset if they’re making sales through Amazon’s Buy for Me?

For many merchants, it’s not just about the sale – it’s about control and consent. They’re upset because: (1) They didn’t agree to have their brand represented on Amazon, yet it was. (2) Some deliberately stay off Amazon to curate their brand image or pricing, and this undercut that choice. (3) issues like wrong info or out-of-stock orders made their business look unreliable, and they had to deal with angry customers. (4) They lose the direct relationship with customers (Amazon keeps the customer’s info and engagement). So even if a few extra sales come in, the cost to their brand reputation or long-term customer strategy can be negative. It’s analogous to finding your products being sold in a store you never approved – even if money comes in, you’re concerned about how they’re being sold and presented.

How do merchants remove their products from Buy for Me?

Amazon has provided an opt-out, though it’s not widely advertised. A merchant can contact Amazon (for example, via a specific email like branddirect@amazon.com) to request their site or products be removed from these programs. Merchants have reported that Amazon did comply and took their listings down within a few days of opting out. In the meantime, some have also taken measures like canceling any orders that come through Amazon’s bot (so the customer doesn’t get the item via Amazon) while they sort out the removal. Unfortunately, the onus is on each merchant to opt out if they don’t want to participate – it was an opt-out program by default.

How do I gift an item on Amazon?

To gift an item on Amazon, add it to your cart, proceed to checkout, and select “This order contains a gift.” Enter your friend’s address as the shipping destination. Selecting “This order contains a gift” hides prices on the physical packing slip. You can add a free gift message and, if available, select paid gift wrapping as options. Note that some third-party sellers may not offer gift wrapping or messaging, and a notice will appear during checkout if these options are unavailable. The gifting feature requires an Amazon Prime membership for shipments within the continental U.S. If you do not know your friend’s address, the Amazon app allows you to enter their email or phone number to send the gift. Recipients can exchange the gift for an Amazon Gift Card without notifying the sender.

What is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) mentioned in this context?

The Universal Commerce Protocol is an open standard developed by companies like Google and Shopify. It’s basically a structured way for merchants to allow AI agents to transact on their sites. Through UCP, a merchant publishes how an AI can discover products, check inventory, and complete a checkout, all with explicit permission and standard rules. Think of it as a common language that could let, say, Google’s shopping assistant buy an item from a boutique’s website seamlessly, with the boutique’s blessing. UCP is meant to ensure any AI shopping action is consensual and that the merchant stays in control of product info and checkout conditions. It’s the polar opposite approach to what Amazon did with Buy for Me. With UCP, the merchant opts in and actively participates; Amazon’s approach was opt-out and done without initial consent.

Would UCP prevent something like Amazon’s Buy for Me?

Not automatically. UCP isn’t a law or a physical barrier – it’s a voluntary standard. If a platform like Amazon chooses not to honor it (or not to participate in it), they can still do their own thing like scraping sites or acting as an agent without permission. UCP works if all parties agree to use it. In the current scenario, Amazon has not joined UCP, so it’s essentially doing an end-run around these emerging standards. However, if UCP gains widespread adoption and merchants signal their preferences through it, one could imagine future where ignoring it might draw more backlash or even be addressed by regulators or industry norms. Today, UCP doesn’t “stop” Amazon; it simply offers a better path that we hope platforms will follow. It’s like the difference between an agreed-upon traffic law versus one driver deciding to go off-road – the law guides cooperative drivers, but it doesn’t physically stop a rogue actor.

How does Amazon’s AI assistant (Rufus) factor into Buy for Me?

Rufus is Amazon’s AI shopping assistant built into their app and website. It’s designed to help customers find products and answer questions. As part of its capabilities, Rufus can utilize features like Shop Direct and Buy for Me. For example, if you asked Rufus, “I need a red leather wallet under $100,” and the best match isn’t sold on Amazon, Rufus could show a Buy for Me result from an external brand and even execute the purchase. The key thing to note is that Rufus, being an Amazon tool, is aligned with Amazon’s marketplace. It will try to keep you shopping within Amazon’s services (including these agentic purchases). Unlike a neutral AI that might truly search the whole web and respect each site’s preferences, Rufus will favor Amazon’s ecosystem. So in a way, Rufus + Buy for Me together illustrate Amazon’s closed approach to agentic commerce: their AI will push Amazon-controlled solutions (even if the product is technically from an outside store, the experience remains in Amazon’s app).

What does this mean for the future of online shopping?

It indicates that a major change is underway. We’re moving from just finding things with AI to actually buying via AI agents. In the near future, you might commonly use an AI assistant to handle shopping tasks – from researching to comparing to purchasing – across multiple stores. The big question is whose terms will that future run on. Amazon’s experiment suggests one future where big platforms do it all for you (with some heavy-handed tactics). The alternative being built by others is a more open network where your agent could shop anywhere with merchants’ cooperation. For consumers, AI-driven shopping could be incredibly convenient. You could say “buy me a refill of my favorite shampoo from the cheapest source” and your assistant handles it. But behind the scenes, whether that transaction respected the merchant’s rules, or whether it cut them out, depends on which approach wins out. What’s clear is that online retailers need to prepare for AI-driven transactions – ensuring data accuracy, deciding on participation in protocols like UCP, and thinking about how to maintain customer relationships in a world where the “point of sale” might be a conversation with an AI. The Buy for Me incident is a bit of a warning shot that these changes are no longer theoretical; they’re happening now, and businesses large and small will have to adapt.