Amazon AI scraping project creates unauthorized listings for small brands

The intersection of synthetic intelligence and e-commerce reached a brand new level of friction this week as impartial retailers found their proprietary product information being harvested for a secretive Amazon initiative. This program, recognized by business observers and affected sellers as Mission Starfish, includes the automated scraping of impartial enterprise web sites to generate AI-powered listings throughout the Amazon Purchasing app.

Unbiased manufacturers, together with Bobo Design Studio and Hitchcock Paper, reported that the e-commerce large is at the moment testing a beta program that pulls merchandise from small enterprise web sites with out the consent of the homeowners. These retailers discovered that Amazon uses AI to mine information from their sites, creating listings that the sellers didn’t choose into and can’t choose out of. The invention has sparked a debate concerning mental property, the accuracy of generative AI in retail, and the boundaries of platform dominance within the digital age.

The mechanics of Mission Starfish and agentic discovery

On the core of this improvement is a technical framework designed to increase Amazon’s attain into stock it doesn’t instantly home or fulfill. Via “Mission Starfish,” Amazon is at the moment scraping hundreds of impartial web sites to create AI-generated listings inside its personal software. These listings are sometimes offered to customers below a “Purchase for Me” or “Store different shops instantly” label.

The system operates by deploying AI brokers that scan the open net for merchandise not at the moment obtainable within the Amazon retailer. As soon as a product is recognized, the system “re-skins” the impartial enterprise’s providing, funnelling it into an Amazon-branded checkout course of. This represents a major shift towards agentic AI adoption, the place autonomous software program parts execute complicated workflows—together with buying—on behalf of a consumer.

Technical documentation and vendor reviews point out that this system creates a layer of abstraction between the patron and the precise service provider. Relying on the product, prospects can both store the positioning with the assistance of AI or visit the site directly to complete the transaction. Nevertheless, the automated nature of this course of has led to vital technical discrepancies that have an effect on model popularity.

AI hallucinations and information integrity challenges

One of many major technical failures reported by affected retailers includes the inaccuracy of the AI-generated content material. Amazon’s AI brokers have been proven to “hallucinate” product particulars, displaying info that’s factually incorrect however offered as authoritative. These hallucinations embrace displaying outdated costs and promoting gadgets which might be now not in inventory.

For a small enterprise, the show of incorrect pricing or out-of-stock gadgets creates fast operational friction. When an AI-generated itemizing presents a product at a value the service provider now not honors, the service provider is compelled to decide on between taking a monetary loss or disappointing a brand new buyer. Moreover, this system makes use of AI photographs that aren’t owned by the unique creators, based on a.pdf. This observe breaks the chain of buyer belief and disrupts the pricing and achievement fashions established by indie outlets, based on a.pdf.

The phenomenon of AI hallucinations isn’t distinctive to Amazon’s retail experiments however takes on a better threat profile when tied to monetary transactions. Different platforms have confronted related challenges, such because the hallucination phenomenon in TV search, the place inaccurate responses are mitigated by way of verification servers. Within the context of Mission Starfish, no such verification layer seems to be accessible to the retailers whose information is getting used.

The proxy e-mail drawback and buyer relationships

A big technical hurdle for sellers receiving orders by way of this program is the dearth of direct buyer information. Retailers are left with “ghost orders” from nameless proxy emails, which makes it unimaginable to supply assist or construct an actual buyer relationship.

In conventional e-commerce, the connection between a purchaser and a vendor is foundational for dealing with returns, exchanges, and transport updates. By masking the shopper’s true id, Amazon maintains management over the information whereas the impartial vendor bears the accountability for achievement and potential complaints. This information harvesting is seen by some business analysts as an try to collect info to tell Amazon’s personal merchandising and goal promoting.

This shift in information possession aligns with broader developments within the business the place first-party data collection is prioritized to bypass privateness restrictions. By positioning itself because the middleman for off-platform merchandise, Amazon successfully captures purchasing intent indicators that might in any other case stay on impartial domains.

Institutional hypocrisy and the scraping debate

The invention of Mission Starfish highlights a perceived hypocrisy in platform insurance policies. Amazon at the moment blocks AI corporations from scraping its personal information whereas concurrently harvesting the mental property of impartial sellers.

Amazon has been aggressive in defending its personal information borders. The corporate expanded bot restrictions on November 24, 2025, to block OpenAI-related crawlers from accessing Amazon.com. This defensive posture means that whereas Amazon views its personal product information as a proprietary asset to be shielded from opponents, it views the information of impartial retailers as a public useful resource for its personal AI coaching and itemizing technology.

This stress is mirrored within the authorized panorama. For instance, xAI recently filed a lawsuit towards California over legal guidelines that might pressure AI corporations to disclose coaching secrets and techniques. The battle between the necessity for transparency in AI coaching and the safety of commerce secrets and techniques stays a central level of rivalry for all main know-how platforms.

Strategic context inside Amazon’s AI ecosystem

Mission Starfish doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s half of a bigger push towards autonomous purchasing. Amazon introduced on November 18, 2025, a comprehensive update on its AI shopping features, noting that merchandise obtainable by way of “Purchase for Me” had elevated from 65,000 at launch to over half one million.

The corporate has additionally built-in its Rufus AI assistant, which manages value monitoring and auto-buying options. These instruments are designed to cut back friction for the patron, however they usually achieve this by bypassing the standard brand-to-consumer interplay. Whereas Amazon describes these options as serving to prospects “uncover and consider merchandise,” the retailers concerned argue that they’re being “hijacked” with out permission.

Business impression and the way forward for retail media

For the advertising neighborhood, these developments sign a brand new period of “unauthorized” retail media. Historically, retailers selected to checklist on Amazon and paid for the privilege by way of commissions and promoting charges. With Mission Starfish, the selection is eliminated.

The expansion of Amazon DSP and the introduction of instruments like Amazon Marketing Cloud present an organization centered on unifying the purchasing expertise throughout the online. Nevertheless, when this unification occurs with out the consent of the product homeowners, it raises questions in regards to the long-term viability of the impartial net.

Some giant retailers have opted for formal partnerships, comparable to Macy’s integrated Amazon’s retail advertising technologyin late 2025. This enables the retailer to take care of management over its buyer relationships and information. The distinction between these formal agreements and the “agentic scraping” of small companies highlights a deepening divide in how platform energy is exercised.

The emergence of Mission Starfish and “Store Different Shops Immediately” marks a elementary shift in how digital promoting and product discovery function. For PPC professionals and digital entrepreneurs, the standard “walled backyard” of Amazon has expanded its partitions to incorporate your personal web site.

In accordance with PPC Land, the rise of agentic AI implies that a model’s search engine marketing and product information are now not only for human eyes or normal serps; they’re now being actively ingested by purchasing brokers which will re-skin and re-sell that content material. This creates a “leaky bucket” for site visitors, the place a possible buyer could discover a model’s product by way of an AI itemizing on Amazon reasonably than visiting the model’s website instantly.

Entrepreneurs should now take into account “agentic optimization.” It’s now not sufficient to rank on Google; one should make sure that if an Amazon agent scrapes a website, the knowledge it retrieves is correct. Nevertheless, because the reviews from Hitchcock Paper and Bobo Design Studio present, even correct information will be distorted by AI “hallucinations” as soon as it enters the Amazon ecosystem. This lack of management over model presentation, pricing, and buyer information represents one of the vital challenges to impartial e-commerce within the present decade.

Timeline

• August 2024: Amazon DSP introduces modeled attribution for off-Amazon conversions, laying the groundwork for monitoring the total buyer journey throughout the online.
• January 9, 2025: Amazon launches its Retail Ad Service, permitting different retailers to make use of Amazon’s promoting know-how.
• November 4, 2025: Amazon points a legal demand to Perplexity AI, demanding they cease AI brokers from making purchases on Amazon, whereas concurrently increasing its personal scraping brokers.
• November 11, 2025: Amazon introduces free AI prompts for sponsored advert campaigns to automate shopper engagement.
• November 18, 2025: Amazon updates its AI purchasing options, revealing that the “Purchase for Me” program now consists of over 500,000 merchandise, many from off-Amazon sources.
• November 24, 2025: Amazon expands its robots.txt restrictions to dam crawlers from Meta, Google, and OpenAI.
• December 2025: Unbiased sellers go viral on Instagram and LinkedIn, exposing the unauthorized scraping of their web sites by way of Mission Starfish.

Abstract

• Who: Amazon and its proprietary AI brokers are the first actors, affecting hundreds of impartial retailers and small enterprise homeowners comparable to Bobo Design Studio and Hitchcock Paper.
• What: A beta program generally known as Mission Starfish and “Store Different Shops Immediately” that makes use of AI to scrape impartial web sites, create unauthorized listings, and facilitate purchases by way of Amazon’s “Purchase for Me” agentic interface.
• When: This system noticed vital enlargement in late 2025, with main adoption metrics launched in November 2025 and widespread vendor discovery in December 2025.
• The place: The exercise happens throughout the open net (scraping) and throughout the Amazon Purchasing app (itemizing and checkout), primarily focusing on US-based impartial manufacturers.
• Why: Amazon goals to increase its product choice, collect aggressive merchandising information, and seize first-party shopper indicators, although it does so at the price of service provider consent and information accuracy.