Amazon.com has sent a cease and desist letter to Perplexity in which it insists the AI company prevent its Comet browser from making automated purchases on behalf of users.
Comet, like OpenAI’s Atlas and several other browsers, includes a large language model that can automate web browsing and do things like make online purchases when instructed by users.
Both sides are going to have to bleed before they realize that they’re better off working together
Amazon argues that third-party applications capable of making purchases on behalf of its customers should seek permission from the e-commerce giant before enabling that capability, to ensure a positive customer experience.
“Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides,” the company said in a statement.
The Register understands that Perplexity’s software tries to avoid detection in order to interact with Amazon’s web store. Reddit’s lawsuit against Perplexity makes a similar claim about Comet trying to work stealthily.
Another of Amazon’s concerns appears to be that Comet’s AI agent may purchase products other than those the e-commerce giant’s personalized product recommendations suggest.
Amazon could make its personalization data available to Perplexity’s Comet if the two companies chose to cooperate, but that might also entail financial consideration in exchange for the data integration. Plus Amazon may prefer to focus on its own native AI agent, Rufus.
Coincidentally, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos invested in Perplexity last year through his Bezos Expeditions Fund.
Perplexity objects to Amazon’s demand and has published a lengthy blog post characterizing the e-tail giant’s stance as “a threat to all internet users.”
That overstates the popularity of AI agents for e-commerce. According to a February 2025 survey of 1,026 US respondents by Omnisend, “66 percent of consumers refuse to let AI make purchases for them, even if it promises better deals.” But it may be that interest in automated online shopping is growing.
In any event, Perplexity considers Amazon’s demands to be bullying.
The AI company’s legal analysis reads as if it were written by AI.
“For the last 50 years, software has been a tool, like a wrench in the hands of the user,” the company said in its post. “But with the rise of agentic AI, software is also becoming labor: an assistant, an employee, an agent.
“The law is clear that large corporations have no right to stop you from owning wrenches. Today, Amazon announced it does not believe in your right to hire labor, to have an assistant or an employee acting on your behalf. This isn’t a reasonable legal position, it’s a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people.”
To be clear, your wrenches are safe. But software touches on different legal issues and Perplexity’s claims about AI agents are not clear even to legal experts. The company for example says that AI agents are distinct from crawlers, scrapers, and bots, without explaining how that’s so.
The company goes on to argue, “Publishers and corporations have no right to discriminate against users based on which AI they’ve chosen to represent them. Users must have the right to choose technologies that represent them.”
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The Register asked OpenAI and Anthropic whether either has received a cease and desist letter from Amazon related to AI browsing, but we’ve not heard back.
Perplexity did not respond to a request to say whether it intends to comply with Amazon’s demand.
Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman told The Register that Comet leverages the credentials of Amazon customers to make purchases on their behalf and said: “It is possible for any service to restrict how a user discloses their credentials. They could say in their terms of service that you can’t disclose your credentials to any third party.”
Goldman added that there are reasons Amazon might not want to do that, because users may find it useful to have services that act as proxies on their behalf.
“So, for example, a lot of financial apps will ask for banks’ login credentials so that they can go and gather data from the banks for the user but also potentially enable transactions on their behalf,” Goldman explained. “So banks could shut that down. But if they do, they’re cutting off a segment of users who actually would value that form of access over any other.”
But if Amazon did disallow the disclosure of credentials under its terms of service, Goldman said, the user would be in breach of that agreement by sharing them with Comet, and Perplexity might face some additional liability for acting on credentials it’s not supposed to have.
Goldman also said Amazon could choose to block Comet specifically, if Amazon could reliably identify the browser – a challenge that has vexed companies that have tried to block AI company crawlers.
That’s not a terms of use question but a technical self-help remedy, Goldman said.
Goldman said it’s unclear whether Amazon might prevail if it pursues a computer fraud claim in court, should Perplexity refuses to negotiate or change its behavior. “The courts are in complete chaos on this question, especially after [the US Supreme Court’s decision [PDF] in Van Buren v. United States]. Nobody really knows anything about the legitimacy of scraping today.”
Goldman added that what Comet is doing may not be the same as web scraping.
“Distinguishing between web browsing, scraping, and agentic AI access is going to be extremely difficult for the law,” he said.
He said the dispute reminds him of carriage contract battles between cable TV companies and broadcasters.
“It’s like one of those things where both sides are going to have to bleed before they realize that they’re better off working together,” he said. “And that’s what happened in all those carriage disputes. As you know, eventually somebody’s losing some money and then they start talking.” ®
