Ninth Circuit Narrows CFAA Reach in Perplexity Agentic Commerce Ruling

A federal appeals court has handed the artificial intelligence (AI) industry a potentially significant early victory in the development of the law regarding agentic commerce. In a unanimous opinion issued Tuesday (Aug. 4), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that had barred Perplexity’s Comet browser and AI shopping assistant from accessing Amazon.com.

The panel concluded that Amazon is unlikely to prevail on its claims under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) because, on the record before the court, it is Amazon’s customers—not Perplexity—that access Amazon’s computer systems. The decision, described by Reuters as the first federal appellate ruling addressing whether AI agents acting on behalf of users may legally access online platforms, establishes an important early framework for the rapidly emerging field of agentic commerce.

Amazon sued Perplexity in November, alleging that the startup’s Comet browser covertly accessed password-protected customer accounts, exposing users to cybersecurity risks and violating both the CFAA and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). A district court granted Amazon a preliminary injunction in March after finding “strong evidence” that Perplexity’s AI agent unlawfully accessed Amazon’s systems.

The Ninth Circuit, however, concluded that the district court applied the law too broadly.

Writing for the panel, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. emphasized that the CFAA remains principally an anti-hacking statute. The central legal issue was not whether Perplexity’s AI assistant interacted with Amazon’s website, but whether Perplexity itself “accessed” Amazon’s protected computers within the meaning of the statute. The court concluded that it did not.

Instead, the panel found that the user accesses Amazon’s website using the Comet browser, while Perplexity’s Assistant functions as a software tool helping the user perform requested tasks. Although screenshots from the user’s browser are transmitted to Perplexity’s servers, and those servers send instructions back to the AI assistant, the court held that those communications do not amount to Perplexity itself gaining entry to Amazon’s servers.

That distinction could prove highly consequential for developers of agentic AI systems.

Rather than treating autonomous software agents as independent legal actors whose conduct is automatically attributable to their developers, the panel viewed the AI assistant as analogous to an advanced software tool operating under a user’s direction. The opinion repeatedly stressed that, under the current factual record, it is the user—not the AI company—who accesses the protected computer system.

The judges acknowledged that agentic AI represents an emerging technology for which little precedent exists. They cautioned that their holding is narrowly limited to the CFAA’s “access” requirement and to the specific technology presented in this case. The court expressly left open whether different factual circumstances or more autonomous AI systems could produce a different outcome.

The opinion also relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s narrowing interpretation of the CFAA in Van Buren v. United States and the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decisions in hiQ Labs and Nosal, emphasizing that courts should avoid expanding the statute beyond its intended purpose of combating computer hacking.

The court also rejected Amazon’s request for injunctive relief under California’s CDAFA, finding that although the state statute defines computer access somewhat more broadly, it likewise focuses on conduct by a person.

The panel also found that the traditional equitable factors weighed against an injunction. It characterized Amazon’s evidence of irreparable harm, including assertions that Perplexity could degrade the shopping experience or create cybersecurity risks, as relatively weak. By contrast, preventing Perplexity from deploying a product into which it had invested substantial resources would impose significant hardship while limiting consumer choice and slowing development of an emerging technology.

Reuters reported that Amazon said it disagreed with the ruling and is evaluating its next steps, while Perplexity hailed the decision as a victory for consumers’ ability to choose AI tools.

Although the litigation now returns to the district court for further proceedings, the Ninth Circuit’s opinion signals that existing computer fraud laws may not provide platform operators with an easy mechanism for restricting agentic commerce, potentially shifting future disputes toward contract law, platform terms of service and new AI-specific regulatory frameworks.