Amazon blocks Meta’s Muse from shopping — and Muse gets a Mac zero-day

Amazon cut Meta's new agent off from its store on Sunday. Shoppers who asked Muse to buy something got a notice that “continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon's Conditions of Use.” Amazon says Meta never asked for permission, that Muse did not identify itself while browsing, and that it “appears to capture and store customer credentials.” Meta says the agent never sees passwords or payment details, which sit in secure storage and are used for authentication without being exposed to the model.

This is the third-party-agent fight arriving in retail. Amazon has already sued Perplexity over its Comet browser and blocked shopping agents from Google and OpenAI, while running Alexa for Shopping and Buy for Me itself. The commercial logic is not subtle: Amazon booked more than $68 billion in advertising revenue last year, and an outside agent that picks the product skips the sponsored placements that revenue comes from.

The same weekend brought a security problem. Mac researcher Patrick Wardle found an undocumented Muse setting that lets any local app redirect the dictation server, capturing voice prompts and the user's authentication token — not remote, but devastating after any initial foothold, because Muse holds permissions for email, WhatsApp, calendars, files, microphone and camera behind one already-authenticated interface. Wardle's advice was “please don't install” it; Unite.AI reports Meta has since hot-fixed the flaw.

• Confirmed Shoppers using Muse hit the message: “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use.” TechCrunch
• Reported Researchers found an undocumented setting that let local apps hijack Muse’s authentication tokens on Mac; Meta hot-fixed it. The Hacker News
• Reported Meta shares have run with Muse adoption — up about 25% this month, its best stretch in years. Cryptonomist