Amazon has told Perplexity to remove its agentic browser from its online store, a move both companies confirmed publicly on Tuesday. After warning Perplexity multiple times that Comet, its AI-powered shopping assistant, was violating Amazon’s terms of service by not identifying itself as an agent, the ecommerce giant sent the AI search engine startup a sternly worded cease-and-desist letter. Perplexity detailed this in a blog post titled “Bullying is not innovation.”
In the blog post, Perplexity stated that it received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon demanding it prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon. Perplexity described this as Amazon’s first legal action against an AI company and framed it as a threat to all internet users.
Perplexity’s argument is that since its agent acts on behalf of a human user, the agent automatically has the same permissions as the human user. The implication is that it should not have to identify itself as an agent.
Amazon’s response points out that other third-party agents working for human users do identify themselves. The company explained that this is how others operate, including food delivery apps, delivery service apps, and online travel agencies. Amazon suggests that Perplexity could simply identify its agent and continue shopping.
The risk for Perplexity is that Amazon, which has its own shopping bot called Rufus, could also block Comet or any other third-party agentic shopper from its site. Amazon’s statement also says that third-party applications making purchases on behalf of customers should operate openly and respect service provider decisions on whether or not to participate.
Perplexity claims that Amazon would block the shopping bot because Amazon wants to sell advertising and product placements. Unlike human shoppers, a bot tasked with buying a specific item would not be swayed by more expensive options or impulse purchases.
This situation echoes a previous incident from a few months ago. Cloudflare published research accusing Perplexity of scraping websites that had explicitly blocked AI scraping. Interestingly, many people came to Perplexity’s defense then, arguing it was not a clear case of bad behavior because the AI was accessing a specific public website when a user asked about it. Perplexity fans argued this is what every human-operated web browser does.
However, Perplexity was using questionable methods to access sites that had opted out of bots, such as hiding its identity. As reported at the time, this was a sign of things to come if the agentic world materializes as predicted. If consumers and companies outsource shopping and bookings to bots, websites will face decisions on whether to block bots entirely or how to allow and work with them.
Perplexity may be correct that Amazon is setting a precedent. As a dominant force in ecommerce, Amazon is clearly stating that the way this should work is for an agent to identify itself and let the website decide.