Home Depot wants AI agents to identify themselves before shopping

Home Depot's executive vice president and CIO Angie Brown told Business Insider the retailer wants to support AI agents that search and buy for customers - once it can tell an agent from a bot, and a customer from a stranger.

What happenedIn a sit-down interview, Brown said Home Depot is in active conversations with Meta about how the Muse agent should introduce itself to websites: "We want to know you're not a bot, and we actually want to know if it's you." Business Insider reports Amazon has barred Muse for failing to identify itself, while Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and Shopify have announced integrations or openness, and Meta co-developed an agent-identification protocol with Sierra AI in October. The story names Instinct once, in a list of consumer agent examples.

Why it mattersAgent identity is becoming the gate to agent commerce. A big-box retailer publicly designing an "agents welcome, with ID" policy - and negotiating the handshake with Meta - is a concrete sign that verified agents get access while anonymous bots get blocked.

Evidence limitsPlans and conversations are Brown's statements in one interview; Home Depot has announced no launch date or which technical standard it will adopt. The Meta-Sierra protocol and retailer positions are Business Insider's reporting. Instinct is mentioned only in passing, with no Instinct-specific detail. No Singapore or Malaysia relevance is claimed.