On Tuesday, we reported how the web is closing its doors to AI agents: Amazon, Yelp and Delta are blocking these assistants that want to buy or book on our behalf.
The next day, the world's largest retailer did exactly the opposite.
What Walmart announced
On Wednesday, in San Francisco, Walmart's boss, John Furner, presented a complete set-up for welcoming AI agents on the Walmart and Sam's Club sites, its warehouse-store chain. It has three parts.
Profiles for agents. Within a month, every AI agent a customer authorises will have its own profile in their Walmart account. Its purchases will appear separately, clearly distinct from the customer's own.
Direct, secure access. A dedicated gateway, initially open to a few companies, will let agents search the catalogue and place orders, without access to the customer's personal information or purchase history.
Rules of conduct. Agents will not be able to go beyond what the customer has asked for, or touch payment information. Those that break these rules will be blocked.
The customer stays in control
This is the heart of the set-up. By default, every purchase proposed by an agent will have to be approved by the customer. The customer can also choose to let the agent buy on its own, but within a cap they set themselves, for example 50, 100 or 200 dollars. They can withdraw their authorisation at any time. And if the agent gets an order wrong, the usual returns policy applies.
These are exactly the right reflexes we recommended for entrusting some of your money to an agent without taking risks.
Letting someone buy in our name is nothing new. The French Civil Code has defined the "mandate" since 1804: the act by which one person gives another the power to do something for them and in their name. The law has always provided that an agent must respect the limits of what has been entrusted to them. Walmart's rules, with their caps and approvals, look a lot like a modern mandate. The big legal question remains open: can an agent be a machine, and who answers for its mistakes?
Two clashing visions
Why is Walmart opening what Amazon is closing? The two companies are not playing the same game. Amazon makes a lot of money from the ads its visitors see; an agent that comes to buy without looking at anything else deprives it of that revenue. Walmart, long behind Amazon online, sees in agents a chance to catch up, by becoming the favourite shop of AI assistants.
Walmart is not alone, either. The Shopify platform has made a comparable choice for the stores it hosts, with weekly or monthly caps.
What to take away
The web is not closing entirely to AI agents. It is splitting between those that slam the door on them and those that open a service entrance, with its own rules.
Walmart's model has one merit: it does not leave a choice between banning everything and allowing everything. The agent can act, but the customer stays in control. This may be how we do our shopping tomorrow.