Amazon has secured a temporary win in its fight with Perplexity over the use of AI shopping bots. Bloomberg reported that a San Francisco federal court has determined that Perplexity must stop using its Comet web browser’s AI agent to make purchases for users on Amazon’s marketplace. The AI company will have a week to appeal the decision, otherwise it has been ordered to stop accessing any password-protected areas of Amazon’s systems and destroy its copies of Amazon’s data while the two companies continue to argue their cases.
“Amazon has provided strong evidence that Perplexity, through its Comet browser, accesses with the Amazon user’s permission but without authorization by Amazon, the user’s password-protected account,” District Judge Maxine Chesney wrote in placing the temporary block.
“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,” an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.
Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity over the AI company’s shopping bots in November. According to Amazon, use of the Comet agent to make purchases is a violation of its terms of service. “Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want,” a representative from Perplexity said of this week’s decision.
