Amazon Secures Court Order Against Perplexity AI Shopping Agent

Amazon secured a temporary injunction to stop Perplexity’s artificial intelligence agent from shopping and making purchases on its site, CNBC reported Tuesday (March 10).

A federal judge ruled Monday (March 9) that Amazon provided “strong evidence” that Perplexity’s Comet browser accessed its site without authorization from Amazon, and that Amazon has shown “a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim,” according to the report.

At the same time, the judge paused the order for a week so Perplexity can appeal it, per the report.

Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the temporary order will stop Perplexity’s agent from making purchases on Amazon’s site while the companies argue whether one company’s shopping bots can make purchases on another company’s site without permission from the site owner.

Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson told Bloomberg: “The preliminary injunction will prevent Perplexity’s unauthorized access to the Amazon store and is an important step in maintaining a trusted shopping experience for Amazon customers. We look forward to continuing to make our case in court.”

Perplexity told Bloomberg that it “will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want.”

This dispute became public in November when Perplexity said in a blog post that it received an “aggressive legal threat” from Amazon demanding that it prohibit the users of Comet from using their AI assistants to shop on Amazon’s platform.

Perplexity said in the post: “Amazon […] forgets how it got so big. Users love it. They want good products, at a low price, delivered fast. Agentic shopping is the natural evolution of this promise, and people already demand it. Perplexity demands the right to offer it.”

In a Nov. 4 statement posted on its website in response to Perplexity, Amazon said that it thinks it is “fairly straightforward” that third-party applications offering to make purchases for customers from other businesses should respect businesses’ decision about 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,” Amazon said in its statement.

It was reported in December that Amazon was blocking third-party AI shopping tools from accessing its site.