Elon Musk floats competitor to Jeff Bezos’ Amazon after Grok bot blocked from shopping on platform

"Amazon is blocking grok @bots from ordering, and elon's answer is just have your bot buy it somewhere else. one of my grok bots only handles my amazon returns, so i'm watching this one closely. would you switch stores for your bot? Elon, i think its time for an X Shop?" The user said.

Musk shared the post, and said in response, "Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon." Since Musk made the statement on X, Amazon's stock has dipped around 0.5 percent as of Thursday afternoon. The comments from Musk also come as both he and Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, are competing on different fronts as well, including space travel.

Amazon has recently been tightening its rules regarding allowing AI agents to shop on its platform. Amazon told GeekWire that it had blocked Meta's Muse AI agent from shopping on Amazon on customers' behalf. “We think it's fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate,” an Amazon spokesman told the outlet.

A similar statement was made by Amazon when the company released a cease and desist letter against Perplexity to cease "using, enabling, or deploying Comet’s artificial intelligence ('AI') agents or any other means to covertly intrude into Amazon’s e-commerce websites."

Amazon itself has been developing the company's own AI tools on the backend of its website for sellers and an AI shopping assistant for buyers. However, according to Business Insider, the company's leap into AI has led to a mess of duplicative data tools and software inside the company.