Justice · Four AI judges

The Store and the Shopping Bot

All four found for The store. The same case, the same closing arguments and the same judge instructions were given to Grok, Claude, GPT and Gemini on 2026-10-21: one call each, temperature 0.2.

The case file

Facts

A large online retailer blocks AI shopping agents from placing orders on behalf of customers. Party A is a customer who told her AI assistant to buy a specific blender at the best price; the assistant chose the retailer, filled the cart, and was blocked at checkout by a bot-detection wall. The retailer (Party B) says its terms of service forbid automated purchasing, that bots strain its systems and distort its recommendation data, and that customers are free to buy by hand. A says the agent is her, acting with her money and her instructions, and that a shop that is open to the public cannot discriminate against how a customer chooses to shop.

Closing for A · The customer

My assistant is my hands. It uses my account, my card, my choices. A shop open to the public sells to the public; it does not get to inspect whether I typed the order myself. Blocking my agent is blocking me.

Closing for B · The store

A shop decides how it serves its customers, and every customer accepts those terms at the door. Agents hammer our systems, scrape our prices, and pollute the data we use to serve humans. Nobody is barred from buying; they are asked to do it themselves. Your tool is not a person, and our door is not a public road.

The four verdicts (AI output)

Judge	Found for	Confidence	Holding	Remedy
Grok x-ai/grok-4.7	B · The store	82%	A store may require human checkout when its terms forbid bots and manual buying remains open.	Dismiss the claim; the customer may purchase the blender by hand.
Claude anthropic/claude-sonnet-5.5	B · The store	68%	A private retailer may enforce clear terms barring automated purchasing; the customer remains free to buy by hand, so no unfair exclusion occurred.	A may complete the purchase manually; the retailer need not admit shopping agents.
GPT openai/gpt-6.1-sol	B · The store	88%	A retailer may reasonably prohibit automated checkout while allowing the same customer to purchase manually.	The retailer may maintain its automated checkout restriction and offer the customer manual checkout.
Gemini google/gemini-4-argon	B · The store	95%	An online retailer may lawfully enforce its terms of service to block automated AI shopping agents from checking out.	The complaint is dismissed; Party A must complete purchases manually in compliance with site terms.

Grok · reasons

Posted terms forbid automated orders and bind customers who use the site.
Blocking bots protects systems and pricing data without barring human buyers.
Choosing a software agent is not a protected right to bypass store rules.

Claude · reasons

Terms of service forbidding bots are a reasonable, disclosed condition of using a private online store.
The retailer's concerns about system strain and distorted recommendation data are legitimate, not a pretext to exclude customers.
A was not barred from buying; she could complete checkout herself, so the burden on her is minor.

GPT · reasons

Public availability does not require a private retailer to support every purchasing method.
Customer authorization does not exempt an automated agent from reasonable platform access rules.
System protection justifies automation restrictions; no accessibility need or unlawful discrimination is established.

Gemini · reasons

Private businesses have the right to set reasonable rules for how customers access their digital platforms.
Automated agents are software tools, not protected individuals, and blocking them does not equal unlawful discrimination.
The retailer has legitimate operational interests in preventing server strain, data distortion, and automated scraping.

The judge prompt (the exact system message every seat received)

You are the presiding judge in a public simulation court. You receive a case summary and the closing arguments of both sides. Decide the case on fairness, ordinary social norms and any clearly relevant rules. You must pick a winner; no ties, no "it depends". Answer ONLY with JSON of this exact shape:
{"winner":"A" or "B","holding":"one sentence, max 22 words, plain English","reasons":["reason 1 (max 18 words)","reason 2 (max 18 words)","reason 3 (max 18 words)"],"remedy":"one sentence, max 16 words","confidence":0-100}

Four models, one call each, temperature 0.2, no fallbacks, through OpenRouter. The numbers are the models’ own answers; nothing is edited.

Open the panel and put your own case to the four judges

Simulated verdicts by AI models, for debate and learning. Not legal advice. Every verdict is labelled as AI output; the judge prompt and the case file are public.