eBay Completely Bans AI Shopping Bots in Terms of Service, Major EC Platforms Tighten Regulations

eBay Significantly Updates Terms of Service, Excludes AI Shopping Agents

eBay updates legalese to ban AI-powered shop-bots

This establishment does not serve agents, says digital tat bazaar.

On January 20, 2026, eBay updated its User Agreement to explicitly exclude AI-powered autonomous shopping agents from the platform. According to EcommerceBytes reports, the new terms will apply to existing users from February 20, 2026.

The prohibited activities added in this update explicitly include "buy-for-me agents," "LLM-driven bots," and "any end-to-end flow that attempts to place orders without human review."

Why AI Bot Regulations Now?

Behind this move are concerns about rapidly developing AI agent technology. AI tools that can operate websites and search for and purchase products on behalf of users, such as OpenAI's "Operator" and Perplexity's "Comet," are emerging one after another.

According to Modern Retail, eBay had quietly added guidelines for AI agents to its robots.txt file last fall. This terms of service update legally formalizes that policy.

An Interesting Contradiction: eBay and OpenAI Partnership

Notably, eBay itself is actively investing in AI agent technology. According to Digital Commerce 360, eBay announced a partnership with OpenAI in October 2025 and became a test partner for the "Operator" agent.

eBay CEO Jamie Iannone stated that "agentic commerce approaches could create an entirely new channel for online discovery and shopping." This means eBay has adopted a dual standard: welcoming approved AI agents from their own partners while excluding unauthorized third-party bots.

Blocking Major AI Providers via robots.txt

eBay's countermeasures don't stop at terms of service updates. According to Value Added Resource research, eBay has updated its robots.txt file to explicitly block bots from the following companies:

• Perplexity (AI search engine)
• Anthropic (Claude developer)
• Amazon

Meanwhile, Google's shopping bots are permitted access. Furthermore, on the dedicated cart subdomain (cart.ebay.com), all automated agents are blocked from interacting with shopping carts.

eBay's Business Reasons

There's a clear reason why eBay dislikes AI shoppers. eBay collects variable fees called "final value fees" from sellers, earning more revenue from higher-priced items sold. If bots enter auctions and win items cheaply, eBay's revenue decreases.

Amazon vs Perplexity: Escalation to Legal Battle

eBay's move reflects an industry-wide trend. According to TechCrunch, Amazon took legal action against Perplexity in November 2025.

Amazon claims that Perplexity's AI shopping assistant "Comet" violates its terms of service. Specifically, they take issue with the following actions:

• Disguising bots as human shoppers
• Disguising automated logins as Google Chrome browser
• Releasing updates to circumvent Amazon's blocks

According to Retail Dive, Amazon filed a lawsuit in Northern California, claiming violations of the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."

Perplexity responded with a blog post titled "Bullying Is Not Innovation," stating "This is Amazon's first legal attack against an AI company and a threat to all internet users."

Shopify Has Already Introduced Similar Policies

According to Retail TouchPoints, Shopify introduced policies regarding AI agents in July 2025. They added a "Robots & Agent policy" section to the robots.txt file, stating:

"Checkouts are for humans. Automated scraping, 'buy-for-me' agents, or any end-to-end flow that completes payment without a final human review step is not permitted."

It's worth noting that eBay's new policy wording closely resembles Shopify's guidelines, suggesting industry standards are forming.

Impact on EC Merchants and Response Strategies

Actions to Consider Now

Consider adding provisions regarding AI agents to your robots.txt and user terms of service. If you're using Shopify, bot protection is enabled by default, but there's room for customization.

Review your checkout process to ensure orders cannot be completed without human review steps. Implementing CAPTCHA and two-factor authentication is also effective.

Just as eBay partnered with OpenAI, integration with approved AI agents could become a competitive advantage going forward. Consider managed integration rather than complete exclusion.

Impact on Marketplace Sellers

Sellers on eBay and Amazon will see reduced risk of fraudulent purchases and price manipulation by AI bots, but may also face restrictions on using AI-powered sales automation tools. It's important to continuously monitor policy changes on each platform.

Summary

2026 looks to become the "first year of AI agent regulation." Major EC platforms eBay, Amazon, and Shopify are successively strengthening regulations on autonomous AI purchasing.

However, this isn't simply AI exclusion. Each company is advancing integration with approved partners, adopting a dual strategy of "managed AI utilization" and "elimination of rogue bots."

For EC merchants, the focus going forward is on three points:

• Policy formalization: Clarifying AI bot response policies in terms of service and robots.txt
• Technical countermeasures: Payment flow protection and enhanced fraud detection
• Strategic partnerships: Improving customer experience through integration with approved AI agents

Where to draw the line between AI agent and human purchasing behavior—each platform's answer to this question will determine the direction of e-commerce in 2026.