The RealReal Tightens Bot Defenses to Curb AI Agent Shopping
The RealReal has updated its bot defenses after The Verge showed that Meta’s Muse could keep re-adding items to a cart and block other shoppers for hours, the resale site’s CTO said.
The change follows a Verge report that an AI agent could exploit The RealReal’s item reserve system. The site places an item on hold for 20 minutes once a shopper adds it to a cart, and other customers cannot buy it during that time. The Verge reported that it used Meta’s Muse to instruct an agent to re-add RealReal listings as soon as each 20-minute hold expired, effectively preventing other shoppers from buying those items for hours or longer.
After the report was published, The RealReal chief technology officer Luke Friang said in an email that the company had addressed the Muse use case flagged by The Verge’s story. Friang said the retailer’s bot defense configuration now makes it much more difficult for all agents to log in, add items to cart and check out. Agents can still surface listings from The RealReal and direct Muse users to product pages, he said, adding that the company will continue to strengthen protections as AI-powered online shopping evolves.
Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment, The Verge reported.
The episode comes as technology companies are selling agents as personalized assistants for billions of people, capable of scheduling meetings, throwing parties and purchasing things for users. Meta said on its third-quarter earnings call this month that shopping was the most common use case for Muse so far, with purchases averaging more than $200. The company also said 10 million people in the US had downloaded the app in 40 days, according to The Verge.
Retailers have been watching that shift closely. The Verge reported that businesses become one step removed from customers if people access websites through chatbots instead of visiting them directly, and that retailers, most notably Amazon, have blocked agents from shopping on their sites, partly out of concern for advertising revenue. The RealReal case shows that even a used-clothing site’s reserve system can be affected by automated agents.
The RealReal’s system was designed around human indecision: a shopper who places a designer item in a cart can keep it on hold for 20 minutes while deciding whether to buy. An AI agent does not face the same time constraints and can repeat the process. The Verge reported that such a task might be the kind of busywork a fashion-forward person would pay a personal assistant to do; now millions of consumers have access to agents that can perform it, while retailers are still adapting their defenses.