While Amazon is shutting out Meta's Muse, Shopify is partnering on payment technology with the buzzy AI assistant

Shopify shares popped 7% on Monday after the e-commerce platform said it would partner with Meta Platforms' Muse agent.

Two large e-commerce platforms are taking different approaches to the latest artificial-intelligence phenomenon.

For months, companies have been talking about the potential of AI agents capable of autonomously making purchases and other decisions on a user's behalf. Now, this is starting to play out in the consumer sphere as Meta Platforms' (META) Muse agent catches on.

Yet over the weekend, Amazon.com (AMZN) moved to block Muse from conducting shopping through its platform.

"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 spokesperson told MarketWatch.

The move "is one of the first clear signs that autonomous AI agents have the potential to significantly disrupt shopping-related advertising," Pivotal Research analyst Jeff Wlodarczak wrote in a note to clients. Amazon is an e-commerce platform, but it also generates about 10% of its revenue from advertising.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment.

Meanwhile, Shopify (SHOP) signaled Monday that it would embrace Muse and work alongside Meta to provide payment functionality.

"We are excited to announce we are partnering deeply with Muse to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores, offering people an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse," Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke wrote on X.

Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, replied by saying that Meta wants "to give our musers access to a wide range of stores to find the absolute perfect products."

Shopify shares popped after the announcement and finished Monday up more than 7%.

The rise of AI shopping agents threatens to disrupt traditional e-commerce and online-advertising models, according to Pivotal's Wlodarczak.

"We believe this pressure is likely to broaden as agentic AI increasingly replaces human search, comparison and routine decision-making," he wrote following Amazon's decision.

Amazon has its own AI shopping agents, and other brands may try to step up their own agentic efforts through bots that leverage data and offer customers exclusive deals, Wlodarczak noted. But "once users adopt a capable personal agent across email, calendar, research and shopping, switching costs rise and we believe the personal agent will become the default interface," he said.

For Shopify, however, AI-assisted shopping could create new opportunities, in the view of Deutsche Bank analyst Bhavin Shah.

"We believe the partnership helps refute the recent bear thesis that AI agents and personal shoppers could disintermediate Shopify and its large payments business," Shah wrote in an investor note. Rather, AI agents could make it easier for customers to find products and purchase them, he said, with Shopify now levered to the rise of Meta's Muse.

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-Emily Bary