What: Retail experts say Meta's Muse, an AI assistant that can buy as well as recommend, faces a trust gap with shoppers and the absence of Amazon, so it is too early to call it the next big shopping tool.

Why it is important: Experts expect AI to shape discovery and ideation more than final purchases, which makes accurate product data and AI visibility a higher priority than checkout integrations.

Meta has introduced Muse, a next-generation personal assistant that can recommend products and complete the purchase within the same chat. Gap and Sephora have integrated it, while Amazon has blocked it, citing authorisation and security concerns. Critics question whether AI agents can be trusted with personal information.

Experts see trust as the main barrier. Melissa Minkow of CI&T says shoppers are warming to AI for research but few will let it handle spending, though Muse's focus on finding the best prices and comparing items matches what consumers want. Barney Stacher of Retail OCD sees promise in beauty reorders and fashion fit and sizing, but argues Amazon's block also reflects a commercial tension over who owns discovery, recommendations and the customer relationship.

Neil Saunders of Globaldata and Frankie Margotta of Triptk say it is too early to call Muse the next big shopping tool. Saunders notes most retail sales still occur in physical stores and expects AI to play a bigger role in discovery and ideation than in buying. Margotta says Muse's playful character can lower the barrier to trying it, but it must stay useful and Meta must be transparent about how captured data is used.

IADS Notes: Sephora's app within ChatGPT, offering personalised recommendations and loyalty benefits, showed a retailer entering an AI platform on the platform's terms (Fashion Network, March 2026). The limits of in-chat purchasing surfaced soon after: when OpenAI disabled Instant Checkout, most consumers still preferred retailer-controlled environments for transactions (Journal du Net, March 2026), and the retreat exposed operational and trust hurdles as well as the risk of relying on external providers for critical commerce functions (Forbes, March 2026). The same gap between discovery and payment persists: Walmart suspended its Instant Checkout integration with ChatGPT after conversion came in roughly three times lower than on its own site, and consumer trust in AI falls at the payment stage, which makes presence in AI recommendations the first battleground (Journal du Net, September 2026). Brands that do enter assistants control their content but not the container, the ranking or the conversation, and become one source among others that the assistant compares (Journal du Net, September 2026).

Is Meta's Muse the next big shopping tool?