Yelp, Delta and JPMorgan Chase begin blocking AI agents from their websites

Agents are losing access to the web

Autonomous agents are being locked out of large parts of the internet. According to The Verge, users of Meta's Muse, xAI's Grok, OpenAI's Dots and Instinct's agent have reported in recent weeks that major websites are preventing their AI assistants from completing tasks. That strikes at the core pitch of products from OpenAI, Meta, Google and others: software that shops, books and manages accounts on a user's behalf.

Sites are turning agents away

The Verge reports that Yelp permits only agents enrolled in its paid data-licensing program, a position the company stated to TechCrunch. Delta Air Lines is stopping agents from booking tickets for customers. JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab have both confirmed they block agents from accessing accounts, citing security concerns. Some users also say Cars.com and Amtrak, which previously worked with their agents, no longer do, suggesting other companies may be blocking quietly.

Amazon set the legal template

Amazon pushed back early, banning Perplexity's agentic shopping feature and suing the startup. Amazon argued that companies buying items on a customer's behalf should operate transparently and respect a site's decision not to participate. Perplexity countered that Amazon's real objection was losing human eyeballs on its ads, and framed its agent as an extension of the person who hired it. A judge ordered Perplexity to halt agent shopping, an appeals court overturned that ruling in August, and Amazon has since filed an amended complaint.

The friction has now spread to the largest agent makers. Amazon says Muse's continued access violates its site policies, and The Verge reports that Grok, Instinct's agent and OpenAI's Dots are also unable to use Amazon. xAI owner Elon Musk publicly floated building an Amazon competitor in response.

Anti-bot systems are an invisible barrier

Even where no explicit ban exists, agents collide with defenses built to stop malicious bots. Reddit users report Google flagging accounts that use Muse for suspicious activity, and checkout failures on Walmart despite its Meta partnership. Chris Canal, CEO of the AI safety evaluator EquiStamp, told The Verge that safeguards designed against scammers and hackers are being triggered by legitimate agents as well.

Cloudflare has amplified the clampdown. After introducing a one-click block for AI crawlers in 2025, the infrastructure provider began blocking crawlers that scrape sites simultaneously for search indexing and AI training, arguing that the flood of AI bots strains internet infrastructure and wreaks havoc on email inboxes.

The industry is splitting in two

Website responses are diverging. Meta argued in a post that turning away a personal agent means turning away the customer behind it, and rather than fight Amazon it has signed deals letting Muse shop with Walmart, Gap, Sephora, Best Buy and other retailers. Shopify has likewise opened its storefronts to agents. The Verge says OpenAI and Google did not respond to requests for comment, and Instinct declined to comment.

Canal believes the blocks directly undermine the industry's value proposition: if companies actively work to stop agents from acting online, there are simply fewer useful things for agents to do, and the perceived value of firms like OpenAI and Anthropic suffers. He also predicts the arms race will make the web worse for people, with human-verification hoops spreading even to ordinary grocery shopping sites.

Why it matters

The agent boom rests on an assumption nobody guaranteed: that websites would accept automated visitors acting with a user's authority. With Yelp, Delta, two major banks and, apparently, Amazon all refusing, that assumption is breaking in real time. The likely outcomes are a two-tier web of agent-friendly partners and agent-blocking holdouts, more litigation in the mold of Amazon versus Perplexity, extra bot checks for human users, and pressure on agent makers to negotiate access site by site instead of selling a universal assistant.