Amazon blocked Meta's shopping bot, then told investors shopping bots aren't even good.

Andy Jassy spent part of Thursday's earnings call reassuring analysts that AI shopping agents are, in his words, "still not great, nor more convenient than coming to a retailer directly." This from the CEO of a company that blocked Meta's Muse assistant from its platform a month ago on terms-of-service grounds. If the experience is genuinely that bad, the restraining order reads a little differently.

Muse is the thing worth watching here. Released in early September, it knocked ChatGPT off the top of Apple's App Store within weeks. Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that more than 10 million U.S. and Canadian users had set it up, with over a quarter of them using it to shop, averaging more than $200 a purchase. Walmart, Best Buy, and Shopify have signed on as partners. Amazon has not.

Jassy also mentioned, helpfully, that Amazon's own shopping agent "Alexa for shopping" saw customer interactions grow 570% year over year, and that users of it spend 50% more per order. So: outside shopping agents are not great, Amazon's own shopping agent is excellent, and the weaker advertising quarter had nothing to do with any of this. Investors may choose which part to believe.