Walmart announced Agent Profiles, a separate identity for an AI agent inside a customer's Walmart account, and said the feature will launch within a month. Shoppers can require approval for every purchase an agent makes, or let it buy up to a spending limit they set.
Walmart also opened a beta of its Agent Gateway for companies and developers. Built on the Model Context Protocol, the gateway is meant to let an agent shop for a user without Walmart handing over that person's personal information or purchase history. Walmart's updated terms for AI agents stress customer approval and bar agents from receiving shoppers' payment card details.
The approach differs from Amazon's, which has blocked Meta's Muse and tried to stop Perplexity's agents from shopping its site for customers. Walmart already sells through ChatGPT and partnered with Google's Gemini earlier this year.