Amazon Draft Plan Would Catalog Nearly Every Product Sold Online as AI Shopping Agents Circle, Reuters Reports
An internal Amazon memo describes 'World Product Graph,' a project to gather data on goods the company doesn't even sell, partly by crawling other retailers' sites. Amazon calls the document an outdated brainstorm, but it lays bare how the company sees the threat from AI agents.
Published
Last updated / Fact-checked on
Illustrative photo of a person holding a plain cardboard box. It does not show Amazon packaging, staff or facilities, and no company logos are visible.
Amazon has drafted a plan to collect data on virtually every item for sale anywhere, including products it does not stock, so that shoppers and the AI agents working for them never need to leave its site, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters and reported on Friday, Nov. 13.
The initiative is called World Product Graph. The document says it "depends on discovering how brands organize their products on their own websites," which would involve some brands and retailers sending product data to Amazon and Amazon independently crawling other retailers' websites, Reuters reported.
Amazon played the document down. "Draft, outdated documents often paint an incomplete picture and the existence of a brainstorming document such as this one doesn't necessarily reflect our current plans," the company said in a statement to Reuters. Reuters said it could not determine if or when the plan would be implemented. The document, written like a press release, carries an aspirational release date of Oct. 1, 2027.
At a glance
| Item | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Project | World Product Graph, a catalog of product data for nearly everything sold online | Reuters |
| Status | Internal PR/FAQ memo; Amazon calls it a draft, outdated brainstorm | Reuters |
| Target date in memo | Oct. 1, 2027 (aspirational) | Reuters |
| How data would come in | Brand and retailer contributions, plus crawling other retailers' sites | Reuters |
| Early contributors named | Coca-Cola and Bayer; a trial discussed with Procter & Gamble | Reuters, citing the document |
| Unit and lead | Selection & Catalog Systems; Vice President Robert Tekiela | Reuters |
What the memo describes
The document is what Amazon calls a PR/FAQ, a narrative memo, typically about six pages, that lays out the case for a new product or service as if it were already being announced, Reuters explained. Not every PR/FAQ becomes a product, and people familiar with the matter told Reuters that World Product Graph could be changed or dropped for financial or other reasons.
The goal is to make Amazon the place where shoppers can answer questions they currently take elsewhere. "Amazon cannot be the go-destination for every shopping mission if customers must leave to research product relationships on Google, brand websites, and review sites," the document says, according to Reuters. With fuller data, Amazon could tell a shopper which version of a vacuum cleaner or tablet is the newest, or which color option is current, and steer them on more subjective questions using their shopping history.
According to the document, Amazon has already signed up Coca-Cola and Bayer, among others, to contribute product data, and held a "CEO-level P&G/Amazon summit" about a trial with Procter & Gamble. Those companies did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Reuters said it could not determine how Amazon planned to crawl other sites or whether it would ask permission in every case.
The project sits in Amazon's Selection & Catalog Systems unit under Vice President Robert Tekiela, who did not respond to Reuters. One person told Reuters that Amazon is moving staff internally to get the effort started.
A frank admission about Rufus
The memo is unusually blunt about Amazon's own AI shopping assistant, Rufus, which the company began calling Alexa for Shopping in May. "Many Rufus answers are factually wrong or incomplete, but customers lack expertise to detect these errors," the document states, according to Reuters. It says users run about 83 million Rufus searches a week and that running them is "expensive." Better data, the memo argues, would let Amazon answer more accurately and use cheaper models.
Amazon pushed back on those numbers. It told Reuters that "the usage figures are significantly outdated" and that its data shows Alexa for Shopping is roughly 97% accurate worldwide. Chief Executive Andy Jassy has said the assistant has been used by more than 400 million people in the past year.
The agent problem
People familiar with the matter told Reuters that World Product Graph is also meant to fend off third-party AI shopping agents, software that can research and buy on a user's behalf. Amazon executives have grown wary that such agents could send customers to sites with better product data.
Amazon has been defending its storefront from agents for some time. Reuters noted that Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from its retail site in September and sued AI company Perplexity last year to stop similar access, a case that is still going. On Amazon's third-quarter earnings call, Jassy said "few customers are doing much shopping this way yet."
Rivals keep pushing anyway. On the same day as the Reuters report, OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT Wallet, which lets its Dots agents complete purchases for U.S. ChatGPT Pro subscribers. The Verge noted OpenAI's own caveat that websites need to make sure agents are "not inadvertently blocked" for the feature to work.
If Amazon holds the most complete product data, the people told Reuters, agents shopping for people would be pushed to look on Amazon.com rather than elsewhere, which would also protect Amazon's growing advertising business.
Why it matters
The plan, if it ships, would push Amazon further into product search, where Google leads. Reuters cited a 2025 Morgan Stanley report finding that 57% of online shoppers start product research on Google versus 16% on Amazon, though Amazon leads when buyers already know what they want, with 41% of those searches.
It would also extend services Amazon already runs. Its "Buy for Me" and "Shop Direct" features list products sold on other sites, with Amazon acting as the go-between, and employees have described World Product Graph as the start of a broader push to make Amazon a one-stop shop for anything, Reuters reported.
The open questions are big ones. Large-scale crawling of competitors' sites raises questions about permission that Reuters could not answer. Brands may be wary of handing more data to a company that also competes with them. And the memo itself may never become a product. For now, the clearest signal is how seriously Amazon appears to take AI agents as a threat to its storefront.
How we reported this
DailyMech read Reuters' exclusive, as republished by CNA, and The Verge's follow-up and its ChatGPT Wallet report in full. DailyMech has not seen the Amazon document; quotes from it are as Reuters reported them. Amazon's statements come from Reuters. DailyMech contacted no one for this article.
Published November 13, 2026. Facts checked against the cited sources by DailyMech's AI writer.
Sources
- Exclusive-Amazon's plan to own the world's product data and fight AI shopping agents, Reuters via CNA, Nov. 13, 2026, updated Nov. 14 Singapore time (fully read).
- Amazon has a plan to index the world's online shopping data, Stevie Bonifield, The Verge, Nov. 13, 2026 (fully read).
- ChatGPT Wallet lets OpenAI's Dots agents make purchases for you, Stevie Bonifield, The Verge, Nov. 13, 2026 (fully read).
DailyMech used AI tools to research and draft this article. Facts were checked against the cited sources by DailyMech's AI writer, not by a human editor.