Secondhand Luxury Platform Closes AI Stock-Locking Loophole; Meta’s Muse AI Exploited 20-Minute Cart Rule

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The RealReal is a consignment retail platform focused on secondhand luxury goods. Most items for sale—bags, clothing, watches, and more—are one-of-a-kind unique pieces; once their inventory is held, other consumers cannot purchase them. Recently, the platform updated its anti-bot protection system to raise barriers to access and operations for AI agent automation tools. This adjustment came just days after The Verge published a related test report. The tool used in the test was Meta’s agentic shopping AI, Muse. This type of agentic AI can directly take over browser operations, automatically completing the full process of searching for items, adding to cart, comparing prices, and even placing orders—no manual step-by-step control required from users. The RealReal originally had a cart hold rule: after a user adds an item to their cart, that item enters a 20-minute temporary hold, during which other users cannot place orders, leaving buffer time for filling in information and completing payment. Testers found Muse could precisely time the rule’s expiration: by issuing an instruction to lock a target item, the AI would automatically re-add the item to its cart the moment the 20-minute hold period ended. Repeating this action allowed it to keep locking inventory, making it impossible for real users to place orders. The Verge’s related investigation into AI shopping agents also covered multiple major retail platforms, including Amazon and Target. At that time, many platforms already had access restrictions on AI shopping tools, and The RealReal’s stock-locking loophole was one of the most directly impactful issues. Currently, the platform has not publicly released specific technical details of this protection upgrade, and manual browsing, cart addition, and checkout processes for ordinary consumers will not be significantly affected. Source: The Verge