Amazon Sues Perplexity Over Comet’s Agentic Shopping Capabilities

Amazon has sued Perplexity after accusing the company of violating its terms of service with the agentic shopping capabilities of its Comet AI browser. The AI startup has already responded to Amazon’s legal threats and accused the retail giant of “bullying.”

On October 31, Amazon sent a cease and desist letter to the AI startup, claiming that Perplexity was not allowed to access Amazon’s Store and user accounts “using its disguised or obscured Comet AI agents.” Amazon accuses Perplexity’s Comet browser of using AI agents to log into Perplexity-managed Amazon accounts, including Amazon Prime accounts, which is something that violates Amazon Prime’s terms and conditions. Amazon also accuses Perplexity of disguising its Comet browser as Google Chrome instead of making its AI agent clearly identifiable.

The retail giant, which also has its own AI shopping agent named Rufus, claims that Comet provides a degraded shopping experience that disrupts Amazon’s customer relationships. The company also said that tracking Perplexity’s illegal behavior has caused “significant losses,” including investigative costs and security countermeasures.

“When Comet AI shops and makes purchases from the Amazon Store, Comet AI may not select the best price, delivery method, or recommendations, and Amazon customers may not receive critical product information,” Amazon claimed. “For example, Comet AI does not offer Amazon customers the option of adding products to existing deliveries, which can result in improved delivery times and lower shipment volumes. Comet AI degrades the Amazon shopping experience in this and other ways to the detriment of our customers and their relationships with Amazon.”

In its response to Amazon’s legal threats, Perplexity said that the retail giant wants to block Comet’s AI shopping agent as it prevents the company from showing ads to users. “Amazon wants to eliminate user rights so that it can sell more ads right now and partner with AI agents designed to take advantage of users later. It’s not just bullying, it’s bonkers,” the AI startup wrote.

While OpenAI, The Browser Company, Microsoft, Google, and others are all launching “AI web browsers,” Amazon’s lawsuit shows that the promise of AI agents that can browse the web for you may not live long. We already have another example of a high-profile company blocking an AI agent with The New York Times, which is preventing ChatGPT’s Atlas browser from analyzing its content. As you may remember, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft two years ago for copyright infringement.