Amazon.com Inc. sent a cease-and-desist letter on Oct. 31 demanding that Perplexity AI Inc. stop allowing its Comet browser to make purchases on Amazon, alleging the use of undisclosed agent purchases amounted to computer fraud, people familiar with the matter said. Perplexity responded on Tuesday that its Comet Assistant, launched in July and rolled out worldwide in October, can find items and complete Amazon purchases, calling Amazon’s demand “an aggressive legal threat” and saying users “love this experience.”
The dispute centers on Comet’s capability to act as a shopping agent on behalf of users, a feature that Amazon says must operate with transparency and within the terms of service it sets for third-party applications. In a statement, Amazon said third-party applications must operate openly and respect service-provider decisions. The company has simultaneously been building its own shopping tools, including experimental features it has referred to as Buy For Me and Rufus, underscoring broader industry movement to combine generative AI with commerce functionality.
Industry observers and investors have been watching closely because shopping agents that autonomously find and purchase items could shift how consumers encounter products and advertisers compete for visibility on platforms like Amazon. Some observers say such agents could erode Amazon’s advertising business by bypassing paid placements, a concern that appeared to factor into market reactions: shares of Amazon.com Inc. were trading down around 1.7% as investors weighed the dispute.
Perplexity’s Comet Assistant, a browser-based AI assistant, added shopping functionality in recent months as part of a rapid expansion of features. The company said the assistant can search for items and complete checkouts on Amazon, a capability that appears to have prompted Amazon’s legal challenge. People familiar with Amazon’s letter characterized the company’s claim as one of computer fraud tied to purchases made by software agents that do not disclose their nature to sellers.
The confrontation adds to a string of legal tensions involving Perplexity. The company faced a lawsuit from Reddit last month and received a cease-and-desist from The New York Times last year over use of content, demonstrating ongoing industry frictions as generative AI firms navigate content licensing, platform rules and the boundaries of automated interactions. At the same time, Perplexity remains a customer of Amazon Web Services, with the company said to have hundreds of millions in commitments to the cloud provider, illustrating the commercial entanglement between the two firms even as they clash over shopping functionality.
Amazon’s move to challenge Perplexity reflects a broader question about how platforms will police autonomous agents that can transact on users’ behalf and how those agents will be integrated into or kept off existing marketplaces. Amazon’s development of its own shopping assistants signals an attempt to capture that functionality within its ecosystem, while Perplexity’s worldwide rollout suggests startups see user demand for agent-driven shopping that can streamline discovery and checkout.
The next steps in the dispute were not disclosed by either company in the information provided. Legal correspondence such as a cease-and-desist typically precedes further negotiations, changes in product functionality, or litigation, depending on whether the companies reach an accommodation. For investors and advertisers, the outcome could affect how AI-driven shopping tools are regulated on major platforms and how advertising dollars are allocated if agents increasingly surface products without relying on traditional sponsored placements.