Users of AI agents from Meta, xAI, OpenAI, and Instinct are running into walls at some of the most popular destinations on the web, with major sites blocking the bots from carrying out tasks for their owners. Yelp told TechCrunch it only permits agents that pay for its data licensing program, according to The Verge. Delta Air Lines is stopping agents from booking tickets on users' behalf, and JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab have confirmed they block agents from account access over security concerns.
Some customers report that sites which previously worked with their agents, including Cars.com and Amtrak, are no longer reachable, a sign that other companies may be blocking agents without saying so. Amazon began resisting the trend last year, banning Perplexity's agentic shopping feature and suing the AI startup. Amazon said at the time that it had repeatedly asked Perplexity to stop letting its agents shop on its site, and that third parties buying for customers should operate openly and respect a service provider's decision on whether to participate.
Perplexity countered that Amazon fears agents because they reduce the human eyeballs seeing its ads, and likened its agent to an extension of the user. A judge ordered Perplexity to halt the agent shopping, an appeals court overturned that ruling in August, and Amazon has since filed an amended complaint. The fight did not stop OpenAI, Meta, and Google from launching agents of their own, and they face the same obstacles. Amazon said Meta's Muse violates its site policies through its continued access, and Grok, Instinct's agent, and OpenAI's Dots have also been reported unable to use Amazon. Elon Musk, who owns xAI, responded by floating the idea of starting an Amazon competitor.
Chris Canal, chief executive of AI safety evaluator EquiStamp, told The Verge that blocking agents does hurt the perceived value of companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, since fewer sites means fewer useful tasks. Meta said in a post this month that turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it, and has partnered with retailers including Walmart, Gap, Sephora, and Best Buy so Muse can shop their sites, while Shopify has opened its storefront network to agents. OpenAI and Google did not immediately respond to The Verge's requests for comment, and Instinct declined to comment.
Agents may also be colliding with anti-bot systems rather than outright bans. Reddit reports suggest Google is blocking some accounts using Muse for suspicious activity, and others report checkout problems at Walmart despite the Meta partnership. Canal said such safeguards are built to stop bots and scam programs generally, and agents trip the same alarms. Cloudflare, which introduced a one-click block for AI crawlers in 2025, has since begun blocking crawlers that scrape both for search indexing and AI training, part of an effort to protect internet infrastructure. Canal said the result will be a more annoying web, with human-verification screens spreading to ordinary sites.
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