Meta and Sierra’s Poppy Lets Customers Set Limits for AI Agents

Companies are left with two choices. They can block the agent or let it act with the customer’s full access.

Amazon chose to block. It cut off Meta’s Muse agent in September, PYMNTS reported Sept. 21.

Now, Meta and Sierra are offering a third option. Sierra is building the Personal Agent Protocol, known as Poppy, with Meta. Customers decide what their agents can access, and companies set limits on what those agents can do, PYMNTS reported Tuesday (Oct. 6).

Under Poppy, each company publishes one file at a standard address on its website, the Sierra blog post said. The file tells agents how to connect, how customers sign in and what an agent may do. The agent then opens a session and identifies itself, so the company knows an agent is acting and whom it represents.

An agent can start as a guest. That may be enough to check whether a product is in stock or ask about a return policy, according to the blog post. When a task needs the customer’s account, the customer signs in through the company’s own page. The same session carries across the company’s website, its APIs and its own customer service agent. A question asked before sign-in and an order change made after it count as one visit.