Amazon's AI shopping tool sparks backlash from online retailers that didn't want websites scraped

Amazon's introduction of its AI shopping tool, which utilizes the "Shop Direct" feature to scrape product information from online retailers, has sparked a backlash from some businesses that did not grant permission for their products to be sold on the platform. This development has significant implications for website owners, particularly those in the e-commerce sector, as it raises concerns about data scraping, intellectual property rights, and the potential loss of control over their own product listings. Website owners may see their product information being used to facilitate sales on Amazon without their consent, potentially diverting traffic and revenue away from their own sites. To mitigate these risks, website owners can take several steps: firstly, review and update their robots.txt files to restrict Amazon's AI shopping tool from scraping their site; secondly, implement measures to detect and prevent unauthorized data scraping, such as monitoring for unusual traffic patterns; and thirdly, consider adding specific directives to their llms.txt files to control how their site is interacted with by AI-powered tools like Amazon's Shop Direct feature.