Agentic Commerce
The RealReal Blocks AI Shopping Agents From Locking Up Carts
After tests showed Meta’s Muse agent could repeatedly re-add unique luxury items every 20 minutes to lock out human buyers, CTO Luke Friang restricted automated cart and checkout actions.
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Secondhand luxury consignment marketplace The RealReal has updated its bot defense system to block autonomous AI shopping agents from logging into user accounts, adding items to carts, or completing checkouts, while continuing to allow automated product browsing and discovery, The Verge reported.
The policy and technical change followed an investigation by The Verge demonstrating that Meta's Muse AI agent could be instructed to repeatedly re-add a one-of-a-kind consignment item to a shopping cart every 20 minutes — exploiting the platform's temporary cart-hold timer to indefinitely lock out human shoppers.
Protecting Single-SKU Inventory While Preserving Discovery
The RealReal Chief Technology Officer Luke Friang confirmed that the company deployed updated behavioral and bot-mitigation rules to prevent automated agents from monopolizing single-SKU inventory or executing unauthorized account actions, while preserving read-only catalog visibility for search and discovery.
The clash highlights growing friction between inventory-constrained retailers and consumer shopping agents after Meta reported that Muse reached 10 million U.S. downloads within 40 days of launch, with agent-assisted orders averaging more than $200 per purchase.
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