The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion retailer, announced updates to its bot defense system designed to restrict AI agents’ ability to shop on its platform. The move follows a report detailing how Meta’s Muse AI agent could be instructed to repeatedly re-add items to a shopping cart as hold periods expired, effectively blocking human customers from purchasing products for extended periods.
Chief technology officer Luke Friang stated in an email that the company addressed the specific vulnerability highlighted in the coverage. The updated bot defense configuration now makes it substantially harder for agents to log in, add items to carts, and complete purchases. However, Friang noted that agents will retain the ability to display The RealReal listings and direct users to product pages, with the company committing to further strengthen protections as AI shopping technology develops.
The incident reflects broader tensions as technology companies promote AI agents as shopping assistants for consumers. Meta has promoted Muse as having achieved significant user adoption, with 10 million downloads in the United States within 40 days, and indicated that shopping represents the most common use case, with average purchase values exceeding $200. This represents a potential inflection point for AI-powered commerce.
However, the shift toward AI-mediated shopping presents challenges for retailers and the web ecosystem generally. Major platforms, including Amazon, have already implemented restrictions against agent shopping to protect their business models and direct customer relationships. Retailers face the prospect of becoming intermediaries rather than direct vendors if shopping increasingly occurs through chatbots rather than direct human browsing.
The RealReal’s experience illustrates how AI agents can exploit system features designed for human behavior, such as the practical limits on how long a person would manually re-add items to their cart. As consumers learn to leverage these new capabilities and retailers scramble to adapt, the competitive dynamics of online commerce continue to shift.
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