Walmart 下月起允许外部 AI 智能体代用户购物
Walmart is inviting AI agents to shop for you
Walmart 宣布下月起允许用户把自己的 AI 智能体接入其网站购物，并支持在 Sam's Club 使用。用户可通过新的 Agent Profiles 审批购买、设置消费限额（如最高 100 美元）并随时关闭智能体；Walmart 还构建了基于 MCP 开放标准的 Agent Gateway，让智能体绕过浏览器直接接入，同时不向其开放购物历史和个人信息。
Emma Roth
is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.
Walmart will soon let AI agents shop on its website for you. Next month, the retail giant will allow you to connect your own AI agent to the site, with systems in place to let you approve and review purchases and set spending limits.
The embrace of AI agents stands in stark contrast to Amazon, which blocked Perplexity’s shopping agent and Meta’s Muse AI assistant. But Walmart is opening its doors to AI shoppers — as long as they follow the retailer’s rules. It has outlined a set of terms for agents, saying that “agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends” and cannot change a customer’s payment method. Agents also can only access information needed to complete their task. Walmart says it will block agents that don’t follow these terms.
Agents will connect to new “Agent Profiles” within Walmart. By default, Walmart will require approval for all AI agent purchases, but you can also let it shop within a certain budget, such as up to $100. You’ll also be able to review your agent’s purchases separately from your own in Agent Profiles, as well as turn off the agent at any time.
The retailer has built an “Agent Gateway” that connects AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that allows AI agents to plug into different services on the web. Walmart says this not only enables AI agents to shop without running into hiccups that they might encounter when navigating a browser, but also prevents them from accessing your shopping history and personal information.
“For example, if a customer tends to buy sourdough bread or a particular brand of milk, Walmart will help the agent find those usual items for the customer without sharing the customer’s broader shopping history with the agent,” Walmart says. The company will let users shop with AI agents on Sam’s Club as well.
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- Emma Roth
来源：The Verge：AI · theverge.com