The first holiday season of the AI shopping agent is arriving, and the biggest stores in America cannot agree on whether to let it in.

Walmart has built a dedicated entrance for software that shops on a customer’s behalf. Amazon has posted a guard at the door. Most other large retailers sit somewhere in between, either picking which AI platforms they will work with or, in a surprising number of cases, turning agents away without meaning to. For consumers who have started handing errands to assistants like Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent or Grok Bot from SpaceX Super Intelligence (SpaceXSI, the AI company formerly known as xAI), the result is a patchwork: an agent that breezes through one checkout can hit a wall at the next.

WebProNews reviewed retailer announcements, terms of service and recent reporting to map where the major chains stand. The short version is in the chart below.…