Cloudflare, Naver tighten rules as sites curb outside AI agents

Cloudflare expanded its settings from September 15 so that website operators can distinguish AI access for search, for collecting training data and for tasks performed on a user's behalf, according to tech42.co.kr. The change gives sites a way to treat an AI agent acting for a shopper differently from a crawler gathering data.

Naver tightened the terms of its search API from the 7th of last month, restricting the use of search data for AI input, training, improvement, evaluation and result display. The company had already ended provision of its shopping, book and specialized-material search APIs on July 31.

Amazon has taken similar steps against outside agents. It blocked Meta's personal AI agent Muse from its shopping site in September and has also acted against Perplexity's AI shopping tool. Perplexity's Comet browser is at the centre of a legal dispute: Amazon sued on November 4 last year over access to customer accounts without permission, and on March 9 the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted a preliminary injunction restricting the AI shopping agent's access. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that injunction on August 4 and sent the case back to the lower court.

Yelp restricts automated access by AI agents that do not have a formal data usage agreement, and Coupang reportedly restricts outside AI from purchasing or paying inside its app.

On the agent side, Meta is expanding partnerships with Walmart, Best Buy, Gap and Sephora around Muse, which it unveiled in September. On the 6th it announced, with Sierra and others, plans to develop the Personal Agent Protocol standard for verifying AI agent identity and permissions. Amazon, meanwhile, has expanded support for its Buy for Me feature, which buys goods from other sellers' websites on the user's behalf.