​​Should Amazon Be Banning AI Shopping Agents From its Platform?

Amazon won a temporary injunction against Perplexity to block its Comet browser from accessing password-protected parts of Amazon’s website to shop on behalf of human customers.

The ruling sets a precedent for how retailers can defend against unauthorized AI data collection on e-commerce sites, but further legal battles are expected as more AI startups build autonomous shopping and browsing tools.

Amazon sued Perplexity in November, accusing the AI startup of ​covertly scraping data from private Amazon customer accounts through its Comet browser and ​associated AI agen — and of disguising automated activity as human browsing. The lawsuit said ‌Perplexity’s ⁠system posed security risks for customer data. Amazon wrote in its original complaint that Perplexity’s agents “can act within protected computer systems, including private customer accounts requiring a password.”

Amazon also said Perplexity’s agents created challenges for the company’s advertising business, because when AI systems generate ad traffic, the impressions have to be detected and filtered out before advertisers can be billed. Unlike humans who visit shopping sites, AI bots can those bypass ads and sponsored search results.

“This requires modifications to Amazon’s advertising systems, including developing new detection mechanisms to identify and exclude automated traffic,” Amazon wrote in its complaint. “These system adaptations are necessary to maintain contractual obligations with advertisers who pay only for legitimate human impressions.”

Perplexity argued in its opposition to a preliminary injunction that Amazon isn’t so much interested in cybersecurity as it is in eliminating a competitor to its own agentic AI tools.

“This lawsuit is a bald attempt by Amazon to block its own customers from using defendant Perplexity’s groundbreaking Comet AI Assistant on Amazon.com,” Perplexity said. “Why? Because AI agents don’t have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with and cannot be upsold to buy more products. Those are the real reasons Amazon filed this suit and seeks a preliminary injunction — not its claimed altruistic concern about protecting consumer data and the ‘customer experience.’”

Perplexity Calls Out Amazon in Appeal

Perplexity appealed the ruling this week, and told CNBC it “will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want.”

Amazon said in a statement that the preliminary injunction was “an important step in maintaining a trusted shopping experience for Amazon customers.”

Amazon has broadly locked down its shopping sites from AI agents, blocking dozens of agents — including OpenAI’s ChatGPT — in a “walled garden” while investing in its own AI e-commerce homegrown tools, such as its Rufus shopping assistant.

At the same time, Amazon has started to pull other retailers’ products into its Rufus shopping results, in behavior closely mimicking AI shopping agents. On March 11, Amazon announced it was expanding its Shop Direct program, which allows customers to discover and buy products from other online stores even if those items are not sold on Amazon’s marketplace.

Shop Direct now supports third-party product feeds through services such as Feedonomics, Salsify, and CEDCommerce. The Wall Street Journal noted that other retailers “have shown more willingness to work with AI companies, with boundaries.” Walmart, for instance, last year partnered with OpenAI to enable shoppers to purchase its products directly within ChatGPT, but later clarified that it would use its own AI chatbot, Sparky, inside ChatGPT or other AI platforms for shopping.

An earlier option that enabled shoppers to buy items directly within ChatGPT without visiting Walmart is also being phased out.