Amazon has issued a cease-and-desist letter to AI search engine startup Perplexity, demanding that its Comet AI-powered shopping assistant cease operations on the Amazon platform. The e-commerce giant alleges that Comet violates Amazon's terms of service by failing to identify itself as an agent when making purchases.
Both companies publicly confirmed the dispute on Tuesday. Amazon had previously warned Perplexity multiple times regarding the alleged violation. Perplexity subsequently published a blog post titled "Bullying is not innovation," stating, "This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon."
Perplexity's position is that an agent acting under a human user's direction possesses the "same permissions" as the human user, negating the requirement for self-identification as an agent. Conversely, Amazon's response highlights that other third-party agents, such as food delivery applications or online travel agencies, routinely identify themselves when operating on behalf of customers.
Amazon's statement indicated its preference for third-party applications to "operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate." The company, which also operates its own shopping bot named Rufus, implies that Perplexity could continue operations if Comet identified itself as an agent.
Perplexity, however, claims Amazon's underlying motivation is to protect its advertising and product placement revenue. The startup suggests that an AI bot, focused solely on a specific purchase, would not be susceptible to the same advertising influences as a human shopper, potentially affecting Amazon's commercial model.
This incident follows a prior dispute involving Perplexity and Cloudflare, where Cloudflare accused the AI company of scraping websites while defying explicit requests to block AI bots. That situation also raised questions about the identification and behavior of agentic AI in web interactions. The current standoff between Amazon and Perplexity underscores an emerging challenge in the e-commerce sector regarding the integration and regulation of agentic AI technologies on established platforms.
