Amazon Sues to Stop Perplexity from Using AI Tool to Buy Stuff (finance.yahoo.com)

Amazon sued Perplexity AI in federal court, seeking to stop the startup’s Comet browser agent from making purchases on Amazon on users’ behalf. The retailer accuses Perplexity of computer fraud and breaching Amazon’s terms of service by failing to disclose when an automated agent is acting for a person, logging into customers’ accounts, masquerading as a Google Chrome user, and even shipping a Comet update to evade Amazon’s blocks. Perplexity says agents are “deputized” users with the same rights and called Amazon a bully; Amazon counters that third-party agents must be transparent and obey site rules to avoid degrading the shopping experience and creating privacy/security risks. The case matters because it tests the legal and technical boundaries of agentic AI—software that performs authenticated, real-world tasks for users rather than just generating content. Key technical and business implications include how sites authenticate and detect automated agents, whether agents can be treated as equivalent to human users, and the threat to Amazon’s advertising model if bots bypass ad-driven discovery. The dispute also touches on broader issues (content scraping accusations against Perplexity, AWS ties and investments) and could set precedent for regulations, platform terms, and engineering defenses around agent transparency, account delegation and agent-driven commerce.