Amazon has quietly turned its experimental shopping AI into a power buyer that roams the open web, placing orders on independent sites and routing everything through its own checkout. The system is meant to make it effortless for customers to buy from almost anywhere, but it is doing so by scraping other retailers’ listings and purchasing from them without clear consent. That has left small brands accusing Amazon’s AI of shopping in places it has no right to be, and of hijacking their customer relationships in the process.
At the center is a set of agentic tools that can browse, compare and buy on a shopper’s behalf, including a feature called “Buy for Me.” Instead of sending people out to other stores, the AI pulls those stores into Amazon’s orbit, often without warning the merchants on the other side of the transaction. The result is a backlash from sellers who say they never agreed to be part of this experiment and now face chargeback risks, support headaches and a fresh reminder of how much leverage Amazon holds over online commerce.
How Amazon’s agentic AI actually shops on other sites
Amazon has been investing heavily in what it describes as agentic AI, systems that do not just recommend products but take actions like searching, comparing and purchasing on a user’s behalf. In this case, the tools scan other retailers’ websites, scrape product details and then surface those items inside Amazon’s own interface, where shoppers see an Amazon-branded checkout even though the goods will ship from an outside merchant. Reporting describes how Amazon is effectively mirroring the catalog of independent businesses and letting its AI agents complete the purchase flow end to end.
When a customer clicks the “Buy for Me” button, the agent steps in to fill carts on third party sites, enter payment details and confirm orders, all while keeping the shopper inside Amazon’s environment. The company has framed this as a way to expand selection and convenience, but online retailers argue that the AI is treating their storefronts as raw material to be harvested. One industry analysis notes that the same scraping behavior Amazon is now automating at scale is similar to the conduct it has criticized in others, a tension that has fueled accusations of double standards as the controversy grows.
“Buy for Me,” “Shop Direct,” and the shock to small brands
The most visible expression of this strategy is “Buy for Me,” a beta feature that lets Amazon’s AI complete purchases from other websites without the business’s explicit consent or knowledge. Coverage of the rollout describes how Amazon’s “Buy For has blindsided independent merchants who suddenly discovered their products being sold through Amazon even though they had never signed up as marketplace sellers. For those brands, the AI is not just a helpful assistant, it is an unsolicited middleman inserting itself between them and their customers.
Alongside “Buy for Me,” Amazon has introduced a related capability called “Shop Direct,” which similarly allows customers to browse and buy items from other websites directly through Amazon’s interface. According to one detailed account, the features, called Shop Direct and “Buy for Me,” rely on scraping merchants’ sites and using their data to list products inside Amazon’s own ecosystem. For small retailers who have spent years cultivating direct traffic and email lists, seeing their carefully crafted product pages repackaged inside a rival’s app feels less like innovation and more like appropriation.
Merchants say they never opted in and fear fraud flags
Independent sellers are not just upset about principle, they are dealing with practical fallout as their systems struggle to recognize Amazon’s AI as legitimate. Some merchants using Shopify’s tools have reported that their fraud detection flagged the automated purchases as suspicious, since the orders arrived in unusual patterns and from unfamiliar IP addresses. One report notes that Users of Shopify saw Amazon’s automated orders marked as potentially fraudulent, forcing them to decide whether to ship goods to customers they had never directly interacted with.
That confusion is compounded by the fact that many of these businesses say they were never told they were part of an AI shopping experiment. Over 180 small businesses report that their products appeared on Amazon without consent, even as the tech giant sues AI rivals for scraping. For those merchants, the lack of an opt in mechanism or clear communication means they are suddenly responsible for fulfilling orders that originated on a platform they never chose to work with, while also absorbing the risk of chargebacks and customer complaints if anything goes wrong.
Scraping, “re-skinning,” and accusations of hypocrisy
Behind the scenes, the AI’s behavior depends on scraping other sites, copying product descriptions, images and pricing so Amazon can present them as part of its own catalog. One merchant described how They felt Amazon was “re-skinning independent businesses’ products and funnelling them into an Amazon-branded checkout,” a process that leaves the original seller invisible to the shopper until a package shows up at the door. That dynamic erodes the brand equity small retailers have tried to build on their own domains, since the AI effectively treats their sites as back end suppliers rather than consumer facing destinations.
The scraping also lands awkwardly against Amazon’s own legal posture toward other AI companies. One detailed technology analysis points out that Amazon is suing rivals for scraping while listing small businesses without consent through its own AI tool. That juxtaposition has fueled talk of Hypocrisy, with critics arguing that the company is trying to reserve data extraction as a privilege for itself while denying the same tactics to competitors.
Consultants, brands and analysts warn of a power grab
Within the Amazon ecosystem, consultants and service partners are already fielding panicked calls from clients who discovered their products inside the AI’s reach. Amanda Morse, an Amazon Consultant, Branding Expert and Amazon Preferred Service Partner, has publicly flagged how the experiment in agentic AI appears unprecedented in the way it pulls in outside businesses without their explicit participation. In her view, the feature blurs the line between marketplace seller and external retailer, leaving small brands unsure which rules apply and how to protect their margins when Amazon’s AI is the one setting expectations with customers.
Independent brands echo those concerns, warning that the AI is quietly rewriting who owns the customer relationship. One detailed account of why some independent brands are upset with Buy for Me describes merchants who discovered that Amazon was capturing order data, emails and behavioral signals that would normally flow directly to the brand. Analysts quoted in coverage of Amazon’s latest experiment in agentic AI say the move appears designed to keep shoppers inside Amazon’s universe even when they are technically buying elsewhere, a power shift that could leave small retailers dependent on a system they never chose to join.
Amazon’s defense and the unresolved consent problem
Amazon has argued that its AI shopping tools are simply extending the convenience customers already expect from its platform, and that merchants ultimately benefit from extra orders they might not have captured on their own. Company representatives have pointed to positive feedback from some participants and framed the initiative as a test that will evolve based on input. In one detailed account of the rollout, the company said it has received positive feedback on these programs, even as other retailers complain they were never asked to join.
Yet the core issue for many sellers is not whether the AI can technically place orders, it is whether they had a meaningful choice in the matter. When Amazon quietly rolled out its “Buy For Me” beta, one detailed account recalls that When Amazon pitched it as a way to expand discovery, small businesses later said they did not realize their own sites would be conscripted into the test. As long as the system relies on scraping and unannounced purchasing, the company’s AI will keep buying from places it arguably should not, and the anger from sellers who feel drafted into that experiment is unlikely to fade.
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