Walmart plans to let customers use AI agents to shop on its website next month. The retailer’s approach pairs delegated shopping with controls that let customers approve purchases, set a budget and review what an agent has bought.
Customers keep control over purchases
AI agents will connect to new “Agent Profiles” within Walmart. Purchases made by an agent will appear separately from a customer’s own purchases, giving shoppers a distinct place to review the agent’s activity.
By default, Walmart will require customers to approve every purchase made by an AI agent. Customers can instead set a spending limit, such as up to $100, and can turn off the agent at any time. These options create different levels of delegation: shoppers can check each decision or allow purchases within a defined budget.
That distinction matters because shopping involves more than finding products. An agent that can act on a customer’s behalf needs boundaries around what it may buy and how much it may spend. Walmart’s stated controls give customers ways to set those boundaries and review the resulting orders.
A dedicated route for AI shopping
Walmart has built an “Agent Gateway,” currently available in beta, to connect AI agents to its services through the Model Context Protocol. Walmart describes that protocol as an open standard that lets AI agents plug into different services on the web.
The gateway is intended to help agents shop without the problems they might encounter when navigating a browser. Walmart also says the setup prevents agents from accessing a customer’s shopping history and personal information. The company’s description suggests it is designing a specific path for agent shopping rather than giving an agent unrestricted access to a shopper’s account.
Walmart says it can help an agent find familiar items without revealing the customer’s broader shopping history. Its example is a customer who tends to buy sourdough bread or a particular brand of milk: the agent can be directed toward those usual items without sharing the wider history with it.
Rules for agents, and consequences for breaking them
Walmart’s access comes with terms for the agents themselves. The retailer says that “agents must not take actions beyond what the shopper intends” and that they cannot change a customer’s payment method. Agents may access only information needed to complete their task.
Walmart says it will block agents that do not follow those rules. Together, the restrictions define what the retailer expects from an agent while it shops: it should stay within the customer’s instructions, avoid changing payment details and use only the information required for the requested task.
Those requirements sit alongside the customer-facing controls. Approval prompts and budget limits shape what an agent can buy, while the terms describe the actions and information Walmart allows the agent to use. Customers can also stop the agent, and purchases remain visible in a separate profile for review.
A different approach to AI agents
Walmart’s decision contrasts with Amazon’s response to shopping agents. The source reports that Amazon blocked Perplexity’s shopping agent and Meta’s Muse AI assistant. Walmart, by comparison, is opening its platform to agents that follow its rules.
The choice reflects two different ways retailers can handle automated shopping. Walmart’s plan allows agents to participate through a defined gateway and profile, with customer controls and retailer restrictions attached. The arrangement still leaves the shopper responsible for choosing the degree of permission to grant, from approving every purchase to setting a spending cap.
Walmart will also let customers shop with AI agents on Sam’s Club. That extends the retailer’s stated plan beyond its own website, while keeping the same central question in view: how much shopping should an agent be allowed to do, and what guardrails apply while it does it?