Home Depot will let AI shopping agents buy, but they must show ID

Home Depot is open to AI agents that buy products for customers, with one condition: the agent has to identify itself. Angie Brown, the company's chief information officer, told Business Insider that the store needs to know two things. The shopper is not just a bot, and it is really you behind the agent.

What an AI shopping agent does

An AI shopping agent is software that shops for you. Meta's Muse and Instinct AI, from Spear Street Technology, promise to scan the web, compare products, fill carts and buy with little input from you.

Where stores stand

Stores are not all reacting the same way. Amazon has barred Muse from its marketplace, saying the bots did not identify themselves properly. Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and Shopify have announced integrations or openness to agents.

Home Depot is in active talks with Meta about how Muse should introduce itself to websites. Brown says Meta is working on self-identification now. In October, Meta said it co-developed an agent protocol with Sierra AI to standardize identification.

Why Home Depot cares about Pro customers

Contractors and remodelers who shop often belong to the Pro Rewards platform, where they get discounts. Brown says Home Depot does not want to lose contact with those customers. She says there is openness on both sides, because Meta wants Muse to grow.

A security side note

Brown also oversees cybersecurity. Last week, companies rushed to deal with severe flaws found in PHP, the language behind 70% of websites. Researchers used OpenAI to find them. US cybersecurity authorities told affected organizations to update or, in some cases, disconnect their systems.

• Home Depot's main website was not affected.
• Some small, recently acquired units had to patch.
• The internal job application system was down for one hour.

Home Depot has also joined Anthropic's Project Glasswing, which gives select organizations access to Claude Mythos Preview. It was not in the first batch, Brown says. The report says the effort found several issues and some false positives, meaning alerts that were not real problems. Her bottom line is that patching time must shrink to hours.

What is not known yet

The report does not say when Home Depot will start letting agents buy, or what proof of identity it will require. Those details appear to depend on the talks with Meta.