Any other agentic commerce tools, it said, “are unauthorized, expressly prohibited, and may not be used to access, log into, scrape, query, or otherwise interact with or gather data from the Site under any circumstances, whether directly or through API call(s), automated use of user credentials, or other means” and approved agents may not be used in combination with unauthorized ones unless explicitly approved by Target, in writing.

Reducing risk

Although analysts and consultants agreed that they expect many more enterprises to block external bot access, their opinions were mixed on whether these blocks would meaningfully dilute the value of autonomous agents, especially those making purchases, ordering plane tickets or performing related concierge functions.

Frank Dickson, principal analyst at Dickson Research, said, “blocking does not destroy the value of agents. It moves it. Every wall eventually gets a gate. The gate charges admission.”