Amazon and Perplexity are fighting over the future of AI shopping

Amazon has issued a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Perplexity regarding its Comet browser. Amazon claims Comet's agent violates its terms of service by facilitating purchases, degrading the shopping experience, and creating privacy risks. Specifically, Amazon cites clauses prohibiting the use of account information for third-party benefit and data extraction tools. Comet securely stores user credentials to make purchases on Amazon via simple commands. Perplexity and Amazon had previously agreed to pause agentic shopping on Amazon in November 2024. However, Perplexity reportedly resumed this functionality with Comet's release, allegedly by misrepresenting the agent as a Chrome browser user to circumvent the agreement. Amazon discovered this and sent the letter. Amazon stated that third-party purchasing applications should operate openly and respect a service provider's decision to participate. They highlighted that this is consistent with how other services like food delivery apps operate. Perplexity, however, views Amazon's demands as bullying and a threat to all internet users. They assert that user agents, like Comet's, act on behalf of the user with permission and are distinct from bots or scrapers. This disagreement stems from potentially conflicting interests, as Amazon is also developing its own AI shopping agent. Perplexity has faced similar accusations of misrepresenting its AI tools to access content, including prior claims by Cloudflare and a lawsuit from Reddit.