Consumer AI Agents: Is this the Wild West? How will incumbents respond?

This report examines the rapid rise of consumer AI agents (e.g., Muse) and how incumbents will respond. Muse can compare hard-to-compare items, call businesses, send emails, fill out web forms, cancel subscriptions and negotiate on its owner's behalf, prompting some to call it the iPhone moment for consumer AI; OpenAI launched Dots and Google will improve Spark. Incumbents are not staying passive: Amazon blocked Muse from its store within two weeks of launch, while Shopify, Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, Wayfair, Dick's, Ulta, Expedia and Instacart have partnered with Muse. The steady state should be more nuanced than simple blocking or partnering, with a shift from human-style browsing agents to permissioned API access, and platforms increasingly distinguishing agent vs. human traffic (Cloudflare noted AI agent requests grew over 1,700% in a year, while human traffic in heavily crawled categories fell as much as 40%). The report argues payments is a winner: greater e-commerce penetration