The Vogue Business AI Tracker

The Vogue Business AI Tracker keeps a record of the most important AI developments that will influence our industry and our world, each week. From venture capital investments and startup launches to product drops and regulatory updates, we’ll make sure you never miss a beat when it comes to the AI news that matters.

The news: Anthropic launches Claude Duet AI agent to rival OpenAI and Meta.

Why it matters: Anthropic has released Claude Duet, an AI agent rivaling Meta’s consumer-focused Muse and OpenAI’s more enterprise-oriented Dots; the Duet has both brand and consumer use cases for fashion. It can purchase products on consumers’ behalf using Shopify’s Shop Pay and Stripe Link, while merchants can instruct the agent to set up, design and manage their Shopify stores, including inventory and orders, Anthropic announced in a blog post. Meanwhile, a “richer visual editor” — which allows brands to design and preview their storefronts within the agent’s interface before anything goes live — is “coming soon”.

It was only a matter of time until Anthropic followed Meta and OpenAI in launching a personal AI assistant. Now, the battle is on between these tech companies to capture both consumer and brands’ trust, so that the integration these agents depend on across stores and payment providers is realized. The growing competition here signals a shift towards AI-mediated purchases, potentially reducing direct customer interactions for brands and making product visibility and seamless checkout across AI platforms increasingly important.

The news: Major banks and retailers block AI shopping agents like Meta Muse.

Why it matters: A growing list of US banks and retailers are blocking AI agents like Meta Muse and Instinct from acting on their websites. Amazon and Ebay have both prohibited these models from browsing or purchasing items on their respective marketplaces, while Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Charles Schwab have each moved to prevent outside agents from logging into customer accounts and transacting on their behalf.

“We have to make sure we protect our customers in the right way [and] we’re building tools to do that,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call last week. “In the meantime, we’re not going to allow just any outside agent to come inside the company, because that’s too risky for clients and for JPMorgan.”

While much of the fashion industry runs its direct-to-consumer sites via platform providers like Shopify — which has opened its network to AI agents unless a brand explicitly opts out — the growing calls from prominent banking officials to introduce legislation point to a bigger unresolved question: when an AI agent makes a purchase that a consumer later disputes, who is responsible for putting it right? For now, experts say much of that burden may still land with the retailer.