Perplexity AI, the startup behind the AI-powered browser Comet, announced that it has received a formal legal threat from Amazon.com, Inc.. Amazon is demanding that Perplexity disable Comet’s ability to make purchases on Amazon’s e-commerce platform on behalf of users, arguing that such autonomous shopping agents violate Amazon’s policies and degrade the customer experience.
Perplexity responded by accusing Amazon of using its market dominance to “bully” smaller competitors and stifle innovation. Perplexity claims that its browser enhances user choice by allowing an AI agent to shop for users while preserving their credentials locally, but Amazon counters that the feature undermines its service model and violates its terms of service.
This clash highlights broader tensions around how autonomous AI agents should operate in complex platforms and e-commerce ecosystems. It raises questions about whether users should be free to choose AI tools that act on their behalf across platforms, or whether platform owners can restrict such behaviours to protect their business models and user-experience standards.
For developers and regulators, the case signals that the integration of agentic AI into everyday tasks—like shopping—is entering a regulatory and legal frontier. The outcome may set precedent on issues such as interoperability, user autonomy, platform control and the rights of third-party AI assistants.
