Past AI News

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1. Walmart launches Agent Gateway so AI shopping agents can buy via MCP, with per-agent profiles next month

   A retail giant opens a front door for AI shoppers, with clear house rules.

   @RoundtableSpace76 likes · 3 reposts · 30 replies · 52,410 viewsView topic

   ExpandCollapseWalmart launches Agent Gateway so AI shopping agents can buy via MCP, with per-agent profiles next month

   While Amazon blocks outside agents, Walmart announced Agent Gateway, an MCP server launching first as a beta for companies and developers. Approved agents can search Walmart and Sam’s Club inventory and buy for you without receiving your personal info or purchase history. Next month, Agent Profiles give each agent a separate profile in your account, with per-purchase approval or a pre-set spending limit. Agents can’t see payment details and get blocked for breaking the rules, and Walmart’s returns policy still applies. It already works with Meta’s Muse, ChatGPT and Gemini.

2. Shopify details how Catalog API clusters billions of listings so AI agents can recognize the same product

   Before agents can compare prices, they need to know which listings are the same item.

   @ShopifyEng52 likes · 6 reposts · 10 replies · 6,500 viewsView post

   ExpandCollapseShopify details how Catalog API clusters billions of listings so AI agents can recognize the same product

   Shopify’s Catalog API helps AI agents recognize when different stores sell the same product, even though merchants name, describe and photograph it differently. Shopify Engineering explains a system that turns billions of listings and trillions of candidate pairs into clusters under a shared product identifier. The approach uses embedding-based retrieval, matching models trained on LLM-labeled samples, and graph partitioning.

3. Websites start closing the door on AI agents: Amazon, Delta and Yelp restrict while Shopify opens up

   The biggest variable for AI shopping isn’t the model, it’s whether platforms let agents in.

   @SasuRobert22 likes · 3 reposts · 8 replies · 1,517 viewsView topic

   ExpandCollapseWebsites start closing the door on AI agents: Amazon, Delta and Yelp restrict while Shopify opens up

   Per The Verge this week, more sites are restricting AI agents: Yelp only admits agents that pay for data licensing, Delta blocks agents from booking tickets, JPMorgan and Charles Schwab keep agents out of accounts for security reasons, and Amazon keeps fighting agent shopping, from Perplexity to Meta’s Muse. Many agents also simply trip anti-bot systems built for scrapers and scammers. Meanwhile, Shopify opened its storefronts to agents, and Meta partnered directly with retailers like Walmart and Best Buy. The author argues the web is splitting into sites that publish a door for agents and sites that don’t.

4. Doubao phone assistant: 155 apps refuse AI operation after the review period, but JD.com does not

   China’s version of the agent lockout, where each platform’s business model decides who opens the door.

   @lixinbao_XChinese-language15 likes · 1 reposts · 10 replies · 3,319 viewsView post

   ExpandCollapseDoubao phone assistant: 155 apps refuse AI operation after the review period, but JD.com does not

   The 30-day review period for the Doubao phone assistant’s SAEP protocol ended on Oct 14, with more than 150 major apps explicitly refusing AI operation: 66 from Tencent, 23 from Alibaba, 11 from Meituan and 14 from Kuaishou, plus DeepSeek and Kimi. JD.com did not refuse, so shopping still works. The author argues that JD earns mainly from first-party goods and logistics, so the entry point matters less, while marketplace platforms that rely on in-app traffic and ads fear AI ordering that bypasses their apps. Separately, Doubao has reportedly restricted its own actions in banking and payment apps.