Walmart Lets AI Agents Shop for You. The Checkout Button Should Stay Yours.

This was going to happen eventually, and I do not mind it. What I mind is an agent that can confirm a purchase on its own.

Walmart launched the Walmart Agent Gateway on October 21. It lets AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta Muse connect to Walmart and Sam’s Club, search products and complete purchases for the customer. It works with any Walmart account and does not require Walmart+.

The controls arrive next month with Agent Profiles. You authorize each agent separately, track its purchases apart from your own, set a spending limit or require approval for each transaction, and revoke its access at any time. Walmart says the agents cannot see payment card data. Amazon has gone the other way and is limiting third-party AI agents that try to shop on its site.

Here is where I land. An agent filling a cart with everything you need is useful. The final confirmation should never be the agent’s. Per-purchase approval exists in Walmart’s plan, but it is one option next to a spending limit, and Walmart has not said which one is on by default. A spending limit only decides how much an agent can get wrong before anyone notices.

Agent Profiles are due in November. Until then, check what an agent is allowed to do before you connect it to an account with a card on file.