Amazon threatens legal action against Perplexity over claims of ‘illegal conduct’ and it’s all because of an AI shopping agent

Is your life really busy? So busy that any time spent going through the motions of online shopping is time wasted? Then there’s a good chance that you’re already using an AI agent to do it for you. However, not everyone is happy with this way of shopping, so much so that Amazon is threatening legal action against an AI company for doing precisely this.

The focus of Amazon’s ire is an agentic AI shopping tool built into a browser called Comet, made by Perplexity. Basically, you type in that you want to buy 10 tins of cat food on Amazon, and off it goes. Comet logs in with your details, finds the right products and orders kitty munchies for you.

According to a blog post by Amazon (via Techcrunch), it doesn’t have a problem with that in general. “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.”

It then goes on to say: “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.”

But that’s where the niceties end, and Amazon closes the post with a fairly pointed 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.”

Amazon has now done more than ‘repeatedly request’, sending a cease and desist letter (PDF warning) to Perplexity, claiming that it will “seek all available legal and equitable remedies” should the AI not comply with said demands.

You can read Perplexity’s reaction to this on its blog post, which is considerably longer and more pointed than Amazon’s statement. “The point of technology is to make life better for people. We call it innovation, but it’s just the constant process of asking how to make things better. Bullying, on the other hand, is when large corporations use legal threats and intimidation to block innovation and make life worse for people.”

The AI company goes even further: “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.”

In its cease and desist letter, Amazon claims that Perplexity’s conduct is illegal because it is “covertly intruding into the Amazon Store through Comet AI in violation of computer fraud and abuse statutes.”

All of this is going to be bread and butter for lawyers to sort out, and certainly beyond my tiny brain’s capacity for understanding legal-speak, but I dare say that if this does all come to blows and ends up in court, the outcome will certainly have an impact on the use of AI agents for shopping in general.

Should Amazon be successful in such a court case, other AI companies will certainly be required to ‘team up’ with the retail giant to be able to use their tools with Amazon, or they may just skip shopping on Amazon altogether. But if it’s judged that Perplexity isn’t going anything wrong, and can carry on using Comet as it currently does, then we may see a flood of agents hitting Amazon on a regular basis.