Charles Schwab, JPMorgan, Delta Air Lines and others block AI agents on Oct 17; Amazon refiles suit against Perplexity
Charles Schwab, JPMorgan, and Delta block AI agents over security concerns; Amazon refiles after appellate reversal; Meta partners with Walmart, Sephora, others; Cloudflare offers one-click AI crawler blocking.
On October 17, The Verge reported that a growing set of mainstream websites and services are actively blocking AI agents from acting on behalf of users, exposing a widening gap between the agentic vision marketed by AI vendors and real-world deployment. Reported blockers include Charles Schwab (blocking AI agents from transferring funds for users), JPMorgan Chase (blocking agent account access), Delta Air Lines (blocking AI agent bookings), Yelp (only allowing agents in its paid data-license program), and user-reported blocks at Cars.com and Amtrak.
Amazon had previously sought to bar Perplexity's agent from shopping on its site, winning a district court injunction that the appellate court reversed in August; Amazon then filed an amended complaint. Perplexity, xAI's Grok, Instinct, and OpenAI's Dots have all been reported unable to use Amazon. Meta's Muse was also reported encountering problems at Walmart checkout.
Meta chose partnerships over litigation, working with Walmart, Sephora, Gap, Best Buy, and others; Shopify has opened its storefront network to AI agents. EquiStamp CEO Chris Canal said: 'If there are companies that are actively working to make that not happen, there are just fewer useful things the agents can do' — affecting the perceived value of OpenAI, Anthropic, and similar companies. Cloudflare has offered one-click AI crawler blocking since 2025 and now blocks multi-purpose crawlers used for both search indexing and AI training.