Amazon and Perplexity are clashing in court over agentic commerce.
The e-tail, technology and logistics giant filed a lawsuit against technology player Perplexity on Tuesday, alleging that the company illegally accessed Amazon’s platform and its users’ accounts to complete transactions on behalf of consumers.
That, Amazon said, caused it harm because it was denied control over consumers’ experiences with its platform and risked consumers’ data ending up in bad actors’ hands. According to the complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, Amazon remains concerned about Perplexity’s “continual covert and unauthorized access” to its platform and store.
Related Stories
“No different than any other intruder, Perplexity is not allowed to go where it has been expressly told it cannot; that Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick makes it no less unlawful. Perplexity’s misconduct must end,” Amazon wrote in its complaint.
Amazon alleged that Perplexity Comet, which the company calls “a personal AI assistant,” used a feature called “Buy With Pro” to access Amazon accounts and listings without authorization from Amazon itself.
Amazon said it has contacted Perplexity executives at least five times within the past year to inform them that Comet accessing its platform is “unauthorized.”
In May of this year, Amazon updated its terms of use to add what it calls “agent terms,” which it said “require that AI agent providers like [Perplexity] clearly identify AI agents and refrain from any actions to conceal or obscure agentic activities.”
In August, the e-commerce purveyor “implemented a technological barrier” that was meant to keep Comet and other AI agents out of users’ accounts.
Ultimately, that effort failed by the next day, Amazon said in its complaint.
“Within 24 hours…[Perplexity] released an updated version of Comet designed to evade the barrier by altering Comet’s behavior so that the Comet AI agent no longer matched the digital fingerprint Amazon had developed to identify it.”
According to the complaint, “Perplexity falsely identifies its Comet AI agent activity as coming from Google Chrome” and “covertly poses as a human customer shopping in the Amazon store on a Google Chrome browser.”
After further interactions with Perplexity, Amazon decided to send the technology company a cease-and-desist letter on Oct. 31. That letter, which the company made public, called on Perplexity to be transparent about its use of agents and threatened legal action if it did not stop “putting the security of [Amazon’s] customers’ data at risk” and violating Amazon’s terms and conditions.
Perplexity published a blog post Tuesday—before news of the officially filed lawsuit came forth—bashing Amazon for “bullying” and for violating the rights of its users by preventing agents from accessing its e-commerce platform for shopping purposes.
The company said it won’t be intimidated by Amazon’s “bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people.”
“Perplexity is fighting for the rights of users. People love our products because they’re designed for people. User choice and freedom are at the heart of everything we build,” the company wrote. “Perhaps that’s what it’s like to be our size and passionate about a world-changing product. They too once faced intimidating threats and fought aggressively in every case to give users a better choice.”
Amazon issued a statement of its own Tuesday, noting that it is focused on seeing advanced technology safely influence users’ shopping journeys.
“We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate. This helps ensure a positive customer experience and it is how others operate, including food delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for, delivery service apps and the stores they shop from, and online travel agencies and the airlines they book tickets with for customers,” the company said in a statement. “Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”
Just days after sending the cease-and-desist letter, Amazon filed the lawsuit. Perplexity did not immediately respond to request for comment on the lawsuit, but reportedly told Bloomberg that its choice to file “just proves Amazon is a bully.”
The complaint alleged that Perplexity has violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. The company has requested that a judge enjoin Perplexity from accessing Amazon’s systems using AI agents, using existing Amazon accounts or creating new ones for agents and more. It also requested that a judge instruct Perplexity to destroy any “copies of Amazon’s data, including customer data, unlawfully obtained by Perplexity” and that the court require Perplexity to disclose “each and every Amazon account ever accessed, used or controlled through or by Perplexity.” Amazon will also seek monetary damages it said it has incurred because of Perplexity’s alleged actions.
The complaint adds to a slew of pending AI litigation on various topics, but any decision could help chart the way forward for other agentic commerce efforts.
Amazon mentioned in its complaint that agentic traffic to its site “imposes operational burdens and costs on Amazon’s advertising systems” because “Amazon’s advertisers pay for their ads to be shown to humans, with billing based on valid ad impressions.” The company said that Amazon has to work to “detect and filter out…non-human impressions before billing advertisers.”
Amazon has been building its own AI-based commerce mechanisms, like its Buy For Me tool, which it launched in April. The tool allows customers to buy items from other companies’ sites without leaving Amazon’s own app. Amazon has also invested in creating its own AI-based shopping assistant, which it calls Rufus, to facilitate stronger discovery for consumers.
In an earnings call last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon would also consider partnering with third parties on agentic commerce in the future. To date, the company has announced no such partnership.
