Amazon (AMZN) has been able to temporarily stop Perplexity from using its Comet agentic shopping bot from searching and purchasing products on the Amazon (AMZN) platform without navigating the site directly.
A San Francisco court issued a temporary order while both sides argue the legality of using shopping bots to purchase merchandise without consent from the retailer. Additionally, Perplexity is prohibited from accessing password-protected Prime accounts and must destroy copies of Amazon’s data.
Amazon (AMZN) accused the AI startup of committing computer fraud for disguising itself as a human to bypass Amazon’s terms of service and refusing to stop when ordered by the company.
Perplexity argues that because Comet bypasses Amazon’s (AMZN) online advertising and cannibalizes its ad revenue, the issue is more about advertising dollars than security risks.
“AI agents don’t have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with,” Perplexity said in its response to Amazon’s lawsuit.
Shopping bots have become much more prevalent and have raised concerns over not just security risks but also lost revenue as a result of apps like Instant Checkout. Despite its beef with Comet, Amazon (AMZN) is exploring AI tools with OpenAI (OPENAI) and other third-party agents.
The court must decide, however, if Amazon’s “terms of service” extends to shopping bots as well as humans. Amazon argues it does not, while Perplexity believes it has the shoppers’ consent to purchase.
“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,” Amazon spokesperson Lara Hendrickson said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg.
The temporary order remains in place for one week.