Generative AI tools and new shopping features like Amazon’s “Buy for Me” are changing how people browse, buy, and interact with online stores—including yours. And while some of these tools can help small businesses gain visibility, they also raise new questions: Is my store being scraped for AI training? Can Amazon place an order on my behalf? And how do I protect the work I’ve built?
At Big Cartel, we’re here to cut through the noise. You deserve transparency, tools that work in your favor, and the ability to choose what happens to your content. Here's what’s going on, and how to stay in control.
The Promise—and the Risk—of AI for Small Shops
AI is everywhere right now, and for indie sellers, that can be a good thing. Tools powered by AI can surface your shop in smarter search results, improve discovery for your products, and make the buying journey faster for customers. That’s a potential win—especially for small brands that don’t have big marketing budgets.
But the same tech powering those benefits brings new considerations for online sellers. Generative AI models are trained on enormous datasets scraped from across the internet. If your store is public, that includes your product names, descriptions, images, and even your writing style. That content could end up inside an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini—used to generate responses, power new apps, or fuel advertising models—without your consent or credit.
This is what people mean when they talk about “generative AI scraping.” It’s not just a technical concern—it’s a creative one. Your work deserves respect. And you deserve a choice.
Understanding AI Crawlers vs. Helpful Bots
There’s a difference between bots that help and bots that harvest. Helpful bots—like the ones search engines use—crawl your store data to help your store and products appear in search results. That’s how shoppers find you on Google.
AI crawlers are different. Bots like OpenAI’s GPTBot or Google-Extended don’t index your store for visibility—they collect your content to train large language models. They’re not helping more people find your products. Their main purpose is to help AI systems learn from your work. Unless you actively block them, they can collect what’s on your site by default.
How to Block AI Crawlers: Big Cartel’s AI Shield
To help you take back control, we built AI Shield—a tool that lets you block the major AI crawlers from accessing your Big Cartel store. If you turn it on, it tells companies like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and others: “This content is off-limits for training.”
AI Shield is off by default, because we believe the choice should be yours. Want to block AI training bots? You can flip the switch in your store’s Shop Settings. It only takes a second.
You can learn more about this all in our help article.
It’s a real opt-out—something many platforms still don’t offer. You own your creativity. AI Shield helps you keep it that way.
What’s Going On with Amazon’s “Buy for Me”?
While AI tools are reshaping how content is collected, Amazon is reshaping how products are bought. Their new “Buy for Me” AI shopping assistant—similar to Buy with Prime—lets customers purchase products from other websites, including Big Cartel shops, without actually visiting the store.
Here’s how it works: A shopper sees a product link somewhere (say, on social media), and instead of clicking through, they ask Amazon to complete the order for them. Amazon takes that link, adds the item to a cart, and checks out using the seller’s site in the background.
It’s not scraping your product data the way AI crawlers do. But it’s still significant, because it changes the relationship between you and your customer. They may never see your brand, browse your shop, or interact with your messaging. You get the sale, but you miss out on the chance to make a direct connection with the customer because you will not receive full customer details, only anonymized information encrypted by Amazon.
Could Amazon’s “Buy for Me” Help You? Or Hurt?
That depends on your goals. For some shops, it might mean more sales with less friction. It could reduce cart abandonment or increase conversion rates for impulse buyers. But for other sellers, it raises concerns: fewer visits to your site, less control over your customer experience, and limited brand exposure.
The bigger issue is that most sellers didn’t ask to be part of it. And right now, there’s no simple opt-out. If you don’t want your shop used this way, your best bet is to contact Amazon directly (via email, [email protected]) and request that your links or listings be excluded from the program, and make sure to enable to the toggle that excludes the Buy For Me bot via your admin.
Learn more in our help article.
Big Cartel doesn’t enable or endorse this feature—we’re just helping you understand how it works, so you can make an informed decision.
Your Store. Your Voice. Your Choice.
AI and automation aren’t going away. But they shouldn’t happen to sellers—they should work for the sellers who want them. That’s the core of how Big Cartel builds: real control, clear options, and tools that respect your creativity.
AI Shield gives you a way to say no to two different categories of bots: AI training crawlers and AI shopping assistants like Amazon Buy For Me. Our platform keeps your data private and your content yours. And if new shopping features like “Buy for Me” change the way customers engage with your shop, we’ll make sure you’re the first to know—and the first to act.
Whether you’re open to new tools or cautious about how your work is used, you’ve got support here. You built your store on your terms. That doesn’t change now.
TL;DR: You’re Still in Charge
AI tools are collecting training data. Amazon is testing checkout shortcuts. But with Big Cartel, you’ve got options:
- Use AI Shield to block AI crawlers and protect your content.
- Decide how you want to respond to Amazon’s “Buy for Me” rollout.
- Keep doing things your way—with full transparency and no hidden nonsense.
We’re here to help you sell more, stress less, and stand your ground. Your store is still yours. Let’s keep it that way.