The Pulse
The RealReal Tightens Bot Defenses After Muse Cart Test
The RealReal has made it harder for AI agents to log in, reserve items and check out after a Meta Muse test repeatedly renewed 20-minute holds on ten listings. The retailer still lets agents surface listings and direct shoppers to product p
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
Ten listings stayed on hold all day
A 20-minute shopping-cart reservation became an all-day barrier when The Verge directed Meta’s Muse agent to keep renewing holds on ten The RealReal listings. The agent re-added the items whenever each hold expired, leaving them unavailable to other shoppers until the reporter stopped the task. The test, first described on October 22, was deliberate: the reporter said there was no intention to buy the items. It demonstrated a way an automated shopper could tie up scarce secondhand goods, not evidence that Muse was doing so on its own or that such behavior is widespread.
The RealReal updated its bot defenses after the test, the company’s chief technology officer, Luke Friang, told The Verge. The retailer now makes it much harder for agents to log in, add items to carts and check out. Agents can still find The RealReal listings and direct Muse users to product pages, according to the October 26 report.
A temporary hold has a different cost for one-off goods
The RealReal’s system puts an item on hold for 20 minutes once a shopper adds it to a cart. That gives a person time to consider a purchase, but it also temporarily removes the listing from other customers’ reach. In resale, shoppers may be competing for a particular item rather than one of many identical products; repeatedly renewing a hold can turn a short pause into a prolonged exclusion.
In its earlier account of the experiment, The Verge quoted Friang describing the company’s previous posture toward outside agents:
“Our approach is to remain open to third-party AI agents, allowing them to browse, log in and interact with our marketplace, while maintaining safeguards against automated activity that could disrupt the customer experience,”
Luke Friang, chief technology officer, The RealReal, speaking to The Verge
The subsequent change narrows that access at the points where an agent can affect transactions and item availability, while leaving discovery intact. The RealReal has not described the technical measures behind the new configuration in the report.
Muse shopping is already a common use
The episode lands as Meta promotes Muse for shopping as well as other personal tasks. On Meta’s October 21 third-quarter earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said shopping was Muse’s most common use case and that more than a quarter of people using Muse shopped through it, with an average purchase size above $200. Those figures come from Meta’s account of its own service, but they indicate why retailer access can matter beyond a small number of experiments.
The pressure point is not simply whether an agent can find a product. A bot that can browse but cannot reserve or buy has a different effect on a marketplace than one that can repeatedly claim an item. The RealReal’s new rules preserve a route from Muse to product pages while putting more friction around login, cart activity and checkout.
Discovery stays open; cart access tightens
For customers, the update means Muse can still help locate The RealReal inventory, but the agent has less freedom to act on those listings. For the retailer, it is a targeted response to a specific behavior rather than a full ban on AI shoppers. The confirmed boundary is clear: listings remain visible to agents, while logging in, placing goods in carts and completing purchases have become harder.