Report finds AI shopping chatbots from Amazon, Walmart give inconsistent 'Made in USA' product data

Center report documents AI chatbot responses to country-of-origin queries

A new report from the Center for Law and the Economy, a policy center co-founded by former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, found that AI shopping chatbots from Amazon and Walmart often inaccurately claim they cannot provide data on “Made in the USA” products. The report, published Wednesday, raises questions about whether the online marketplaces are held to the same country-of-origin standards as other retailers.

The findings come amid recent federal actions, including President Trump in March directing the FTC to consider regulations requiring online platforms to verify “Made in the USA” labels and the FTC last year sending letters to Amazon and Walmart about third-party sellers on their platforms appearing to falsely advertise products as made in the U.S. The letters urged both companies to take action against offending sellers but did not address whether the platforms themselves had violated relevant laws.

The report documented specific instances of AI chatbot behavior. When asked to identify products such as boots or fly-fishing reels that were “made in the USA,” Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping agent said it did not have access to that information. However, slightly tweaking the prompt to say “in the USA” yielded a list of products labeled as made in the United States, according to the report. The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute, which reproduced the chatbot behaviors, confirmed the pattern.

Walmart’s Sparky chatbot initially declined a request to assess the reliability of “Made in USA” claims for products in a shopping cart. It later responded to a similar prompt by ranking the products from “high confidence” to “low confidence/likely not U.S. made,” the report said.

The report also noted that Alexa readily provided lists of products designated “Made in China,” and said both platforms host many misleading or contradictory “Made in USA” claims, including some for products described as both domestic and imported. It described an instance in which Alexa acknowledged that Amazon had inaccurately labeled a collection of T-shirts as U.S.-made in a product comparison chart.

Erie Meyer, a senior fellow at the Center for Law and the Economy and a co-author of the report, said the investigation raises the question of whether Amazon and Walmart’s online marketplaces are held to the same standards as other retailers when it comes to country-of-origin claims. Meyer formerly served as the FTC’s chief technologist and director of policy planning under Khan.

Amazon said in a statement that it disagrees with the report’s conclusions. “We strive to provide customers with detailed information about products in our store, including where they are made when that information is provided to us by manufacturers or third-party sellers,” the company said. “The suggestion that we intentionally withhold country-of-origin information from customers is incorrect. Country-of-origin information, when available, is currently displayed on product detail pages, and we’re continually working to improve Alexa for Shopping’s ability to accurately provide this information to make it even more accessible for customers.”

Walmart did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The chatbots’ own outputs suggest that the problem stems from uncertainty around verifying “Made in USA” claims, according to the report. In one exchange, Sparky told the WSJ Leadership Institute: “If I’ve said in a past conversation that I can’t do that, that was overly cautious. I can offer a reasoned assessment based on product title claims, brand reputation and product category norms—I just can’t verify them with certainty, which is why I always recommend checking the Specifications section on each product page for the official country of origin.”

President Trump in March directed the FTC to consider proposing regulations that would require online marketplaces to establish procedures for verifying country-of-origin claims. The FTC declined to comment on the report.

The FTC under Khan sued Amazon in 2023, alleging that it illegally operates as a monopoly to keep prices high and harm its rivals. That case is ongoing. Khan and Columbia law professor Lev Menand formed the Center for Law and the Economy earlier this year.