October 28, 2026 · Blogs
Yelp, Delta, JPMorgan and Amazon are blocking AI shopping and booking agents, while Walmart and Shopify welcome them. What is happening and five questions to decide your own website's policy.
OpenAI, Meta, Google and others are promising AI agents that book restaurants, clear inboxes and buy shoes on your behalf. A growing number of websites are refusing to let them in. As The Verge reported on 17 October 2026, this is becoming one of the biggest practical questions in AI, and every business with a website or app will have to decide where it stands.
Who is blocking agents
In recent weeks, users of Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots and Instinct have reported their agents being blocked on major sites:
- Yelp told TechCrunch it only allows agents that pay for its data licensing programme.
- Delta Air Lines is preventing agents from booking tickets for users.
- JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab confirmed they block agents from accessing accounts, citing security.
- Amazon has said Muse's continued access violates its site policies, and users report Grok, Dots and Instinct's agent cannot use it either.
- Users also report that Cars.com and Amtrak, which previously worked, are no longer accessible to their agents.
The legal position is unsettled. Amazon sued Perplexity last year over its agentic shopping feature. A judge ordered Perplexity to stop, but an appeals court overturned that ruling in August, and Amazon has since filed an amended complaint. Perplexity argues an agent is simply an extension of the customer; Amazon says third parties buying on a customer's behalf "should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate".
Who is opening the door
Others are going the opposite way. Meta has partnered with Walmart, Gap, Sephora, Best Buy and others to let Muse shop on their sites, arguing that "turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it". Shopify has opened its network of storefronts to AI agents.
Meanwhile many agents are blocked by accident. Anti-bot systems built to stop scrapers and fraud also trigger on agents, and Cloudflare, which introduced a one-click block for AI crawlers in 2025, now blocks crawlers that scrape for both search indexing and AI training at once.
Why it matters
Chris Canal, chief executive of the AI safety evaluator EquiStamp, told The Verge that every blocked site reduces what agents can do, and with it the value of the companies selling them. He also warned that heavier bot checks could make the web more "annoying" for humans, with more hoops to prove you are a person even on simple shopping sites.
Questions for your own website or app
Whether you sell online, take bookings or run a customer portal, agents are already arriving. It is better to decide your policy than to let a default setting decide it for you.
- Do you want agent traffic at all? For a retailer or booking service, an agent may be a customer. For a bank or account portal, the security risk may outweigh it.
- Which parts of the site? Many businesses will want agents to browse products, prices and availability but not log in, change accounts or pay without the customer confirming.
- Are you blocking by accident? Check your bot protection, firewall and CDN settings so you know whether agents are being turned away and whether that is what you intend.
- Can you offer a better route? A proper API, structured product data or a partner programme gives you control over what agents can see and do, and lets you charge for it, as Yelp does.
- What do your terms say? Update your terms of use to state whether automated agents may use the site and on what conditions.
Webmasters LDN designs and builds websites, e-commerce platforms and APIs for UK businesses. If you want your site ready for AI agents, or protected from them, we can help you set the right policy and build it.
This article summarises news reports published up to 28 October 2026.