The agentic AI feature known as ‘Buy for Me’ also reportedly led to a few instances where the products that had been listed were never sold or were out of stock. In February 2025, the tech giant announced an AI feature called ‘Shop Direct’ that shows consumers various items from other brands’ websites on Amazon.

The ‘Buy for Me’ feature builds on this by letting users trigger an AI agent that autonomously purchases the product from the brand’s website with a single tap. Both these AI-powered features are currently in testing within the US. They are part of Amazon’s bet on AI agents, LLM-powered systems that can take action on their own, as the future of online shopping. In 2024, Amazon rolled out its own AI shopping chatbot called Rufus, which also boasts of some agentic AI capabilities.

Potential pushback from online retailers over AI agent-driven shopping highlights two key points.

First, agentic commerce still faces significant challenges. Like Amazon, several tech companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have rolled out new features that let users buy products from retailers without leaving the chatbot window.

Second, it could deepen tensions between Amazon and third-party sellers. More than 60 per cent of sales on Amazon are reportedly from independent retailers. However, the tech giant has also come under regulatory scrutiny for favouring its own products, including in India, where the country’s antitrust regulator in 2024, found that the company breached competition laws by giving preference to select sellers and deep discounting of some products.

In response to the pushback from online retailers, Amazon reportedly said that the trial run has received positive feedbackadding that the two features are designed to help customers find products not sold on its site while helping businesses reach new customers and drive incremental sales.

“Businesses can opt out at any time by emailing [email protected], and we remove them from these programs promptly,” an Amazon spokesperson was quoted as saying by CNBC.

Meanwhile, there is also a turf war brewing in the agentic AI race. In November 2025, Amazon sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity, seeking to block the search startup’s agentic AI-powered browser, Comet, from accessing its online marketplace.

While Amazon accused Perplexity of violating its terms of service since Comet had failed to identify itself as an AI agent despite multiple warnings, Perplexity countered by saying that Comet does not have to identify itself as an AI agent because it automatically has the “same permissions” as a human user since it is acting on their behalf.