Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI Inc., at the Bloomberg Tech Conference on Thursday, June 5, 2025 in San Francisco, California, USA.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Confused AI is accused Amazon The company was accused of “bullying” on Tuesday after it received a letter from the e-commerce giant asking it to prevent people from using its artificial intelligence browser Comet to make purchases on its behalf.
Perplexity said in a blog post that users can ask Comet Assistant to find and buy products on Amazon, and “we love this experience.” But Perplexity said it had received “aggressive legal threats” from Amazon “demanding” it stop its actions.
Amazon’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity dated October 31, accusing the company of computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI agents take action on behalf of users on its e-commerce platform.
“Given Amazon’s prior efforts and interactions with Perplexity, Perplexity does not have the authority to use a disguised or hidden Comet AI agent to access Amazon stores, Amazon user accounts, or account details,” a copy of the letter seen by CNBC said.
Amazon has taken steps in recent months to prevent external AI agents, including those developed by OpenAI, from crawling its website. google and meta.
“Amazon should welcome this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn’t care,” Perplexity wrote. “They are more interested in serving you ads and sponsored results and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and misleading offers.”
Amazon said in a blog post that third-party shopping agents should operate openly and “respect service providers’ decisions” about whether to participate.
The company said Perplexity does not operate transparently and avoid unauthorized access to its stores.
Perplexity agents also claimed that Amazon degrades the shopping experience by showing products that don’t expand discovery, lack personalized recommendations, and may not have the fastest delivery speeds for shoppers.
Amazon cited food delivery, delivery services, and online travel agencies as examples of applications that operate with provider consent.
“Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have similar obligations, and we have repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, especially given the significantly diminished shopping and customer service experience they provide,” the company wrote.
At the same time that Amazon is removing AI tools from its site, the company is launching its own product.
Last February, it launched a shopping chatbot called Rufus that can answer questions and suggest products. Amazon also began testing an agent in April called “Buy For Me,” which lets shoppers buy some items from other websites without leaving the app.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors on an earnings call last week that the company is “in discussions” and may eventually partner with a third-party AI agent.
“However, we have to find ways to improve the customer experience,” he added.
Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that provides users with easy answers to their questions and provides links to original source material on the web. The company first released Comet in July and rolled it out for free worldwide in October.
Perplexity said Comet will function as a personal assistant that can search the web, organize tabs, shop, draft emails, and more.
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