An agent that helps users snatch up iPhone foldable-screen models is reshaping e-commerce in the AI era.
Shopify AI saw transaction orders grow by a factor of 13. In the early morning of October 16, pre-orders began for Apple’s first foldable-screen phone, the iPhone Duo. Priced from $1,999, initial production capacity was tight, and delivery dates quickly slipped to January next year. This time, it wasn’t just people glued to their screens vying for the launch. This year, Agents have become the strictest “parents” to iPhone Duo scalpers. | Image source: Apple On the MacRumors forum, one user who missed out vented their frustration, while on Reddit others boasted about using Muse bots to snatch up multiple units in a single go—before even a human could click, the inventory had already been swept away by AI. Muse is Meta’s personal Agent, launched on September 8; shortly after its debut, it topped the free charts in the U.S. App Store, with downloads soon surpassing 2.5 million. According to Meta, shopping has become one of Muse’s primary use cases. Around the time the iPhone Duo went on sale, Muse even released a new version optimized for this device, with an update note that emphasized making in‑chat shopping more convenient. AI-driven shopping has moved from demo stages at product launches straight into real‑world stock‑picking scenarios. But not every retailer welcomes these new customers. In late September, Amazon began banning Muse. By October, users of Musk’s Grok Bot encountered the same warning when placing orders on Amazon: unauthorized AI agents continuing to access the platform violates Amazon’s terms of service. Meanwhile, another company, Shopify, took the exact opposite approach. On September 21, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke announced a deep partnership with Muse, enabling Muse to process checkout through Shop Pay across all Shopify stores. And Shopify’s financial reports already show early returns from this strategy: in the first quarter of this year, orders generated via AI search grew nearly thirteenfold year over year, while store traffic driven by AI increased eightfold. Closing doors on one hand, opening them on the other—when more and more purchasing decisions are handed over to Agents, will the question of “whether or not to let Agents in” become…