Amazon sues Perplexity over covert AI agent access to marketplace

Amazon filed a federal lawsuit in opposition to Perplexity AI on November 4, 2025, alleging the startup deployed covert synthetic intelligence brokers into the e-commerce platform’s programs with out authorization. The grievance, filed within the Northern District of California, marks the primary time Amazon has taken authorized motion in opposition to an AI firm over autonomous buying brokers.

The lawsuit facilities on Perplexity’s Comet browser, which Amazon claims disguises itself as Google Chrome whereas enabling AI brokers to entry personal buyer accounts and make purchases on behalf of customers. In keeping with the grievance, Perplexity violated the Pc Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s Complete Pc Knowledge Entry and Fraud Act by refusing to transparently determine its agentic actions after repeated requests from Amazon.

Technical deception alleged in courtroom filings

Amazon alleges Perplexity configured Comet to transmit the identical user-agent string utilized by Google Chrome, making the AI agent seem as if a human buyer was looking Amazon’s web site. The grievance states that “when the Comet AI agent accesses the Amazon Retailer, it doesn’t use a singular browser identifier and as an alternative transmits the identical ‘user-agent’ string that’s utilized by Google Chrome.”

The e-commerce platform argues this violates business requirements. Different internet browsers with agentic AI capabilities use distinctive user-agent strings to tell apart requests initiated by AI brokers from these ensuing from direct human motion, in accordance with the lawsuit.

Amazon’s forensic evaluation required substantial sources. The grievance particulars how “quite a few Amazon software program engineers and different extremely expert staff spent important time conducting a forensic evaluation of community site visitors and browser information to isolate the Comet AI agent’s browser fingerprint from unusual buyer actions.”

Promoting income at stake

The lawsuit reveals particular considerations about how AI brokers threaten Amazon’s promoting enterprise mannequin. In keeping with the grievance, “site visitors from automated brokers, akin to that from the Comet AI agent, imposes operational burdens and prices on Amazon’s promoting programs.”

Amazon’s advertisers pay for his or her adverts to be proven to people, with billing primarily based on legitimate advert impressions. The grievance states that “when automated brokers, such because the Comet AI agent, generate advert site visitors, Amazon should make investments engineering sources to detect and filter out these non-human impressions earlier than billing advertisers.”

This filtering requirement forces Amazon to change its promoting infrastructure. The grievance explains that “growing new detection mechanisms to determine and exclude automated site visitors” turns into needed to take care of contractual obligations with advertisers who pay just for respectable human impressions.

The monetary affect extends past technical prices. Amazon’s third-quarter 2025 promoting income reached $17.7 billion, rising 22 p.c year-over-year. CEO Andy Jassy informed buyers in the course of the earnings name that Amazon’s promoting delivers “a return on promoting spend that is very uncommon,” emphasizing the platform’s worth to manufacturers.

Perplexity’s Comet browser threatens this income stream by bypassing Amazon’s curated buying expertise. The AI agent doesn’t show sponsored merchandise, suggestions, or different promoting components that generate income for Amazon when human clients browse {the marketplace}.

Timeline of confrontation

Amazon first contacted Perplexity about unauthorized AI agent deployment on November 19, 2024, when the e-commerce platform found Perplexity’s “Purchase with Professional” function. The function allowed paying subscribers to make purchases by Amazon utilizing Perplexity-managed Amazon Prime accounts, violating Amazon Prime Phrases & Circumstances.

Perplexity agreed at the moment to halt AI agent deployment within the Amazon Retailer until the businesses reached mutually agreed-upon phrases. The startup didn’t honor that settlement, in accordance with Amazon’s grievance.

On August 4, 2025, shortly after Amazon detected Comet’s renewed agentic exercise, Amazon contacted Perplexity’s Chief Enterprise Officer, Dmitry Shevelenko. The grievance states that Amazon “defined that Amazon requires all AI brokers to behave transparently within the Amazon Retailer and that Defendant was not permitted to deploy the Comet AI agent within the Amazon Retailer.” Shevelenko falsely claimed Comet was not “agentic,” contradicting the corporate’s public advertising supplies.

Amazon applied a technological barrier on August 19, 2025, to limit Comet’s entry to non-public buyer accounts. Inside 24 hours, Perplexity launched an up to date model of Comet designed to evade the barrier. The grievance alleges this “software program replace allowed Defendant to once more get hold of unauthorized agentic entry to Amazon’s personal buyer accounts.”

Amazon contacted Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas on September 12 and September 29, 2025, explaining that Comet’s actions had been unauthorized. Srinivas “didn’t deny that Comet AI was accessing the Amazon Retailer with out figuring out itself” and “supplied no respectable justification for Defendant’s unauthorized conduct,” in accordance with the lawsuit.

On October 2, 2025, Perplexity made Comet widely available to the public for free, increasing the potential scope of unauthorized entry.

Amazon despatched a cease-and-desist letter on October 31, 2025, demanding Perplexity instantly cease utilizing AI brokers to covertly entry the Amazon Retailer.

Safety vulnerabilities compound considerations

The lawsuit emphasizes safety dangers posed by Comet’s documented vulnerabilities. Amazon cites public safety analysis displaying the browser is “susceptible to immediate injection assaults, phishing, scams, and different types of cyberattacks.”

Safety researchers at Courageous Software program and LayerX discovered multiple critical vulnerabilities in Comet between August and October 2025. The vulnerabilities allow attackers to steal consumer credentials, entry delicate information, and exfiltrate personal data by oblique immediate injection strategies.

The grievance references an article from The Hacker Information explaining that “CometJacking hijacks the AI assistant embedded within the browser to steal information, all whereas bypassing Perplexity’s information protections utilizing trivial Base64-encoding methods.” One other cited report from Tom’s {Hardware} states that “Comet would scan an apparent phishing e mail, go to the malicious web site, and immediate its consumer for his or her banking account credentials with none indication that one thing is perhaps amiss.”

These safety failures create danger for Amazon clients who use Comet to entry their accounts. The grievance argues that “Perplexity is deliberately evading Amazon’s identification of the Comet AI agent when it accesses the Amazon Retailer, and thereby straight interfering with Amazon’s efforts to handle safety dangers.”

Degraded buyer expertise claimed

Amazon alleges Comet degrades the buying expertise the e-commerce platform spent a long time growing. The grievance states that Amazon has “invested billions of {dollars} over a few years to develop a fastidiously curated buying expertise within the Amazon Retailer.”

The buying expertise is designed to assist clients discover merchandise primarily based on critiques, value, availability, supply velocity, return charges, and every buyer’s looking historical past. When Comet’s AI agent makes purchases, it “might not choose the very best value, supply methodology, or suggestions, and Amazon clients might not obtain vital product data,” in accordance with the lawsuit.

Particular examples embody Comet’s failure to supply clients the choice of including merchandise to present deliveries. This omission “may end up in improved supply instances and decrease cargo volumes” when correctly applied, the grievance states.

The lawsuit argues this interference harms Amazon’s popularity and buyer relationships. The grievance states that “when clients who use the Comet AI agent can’t belief that their private account data is safe, or after they undergo from a degraded buying expertise, their confidence within the Amazon model is diminished.”

Perplexity calls lawsuit bullying

Perplexity responded to the lawsuit with a weblog put up on November 4, 2025, titled “Bullying is Not Innovation.” The corporate characterised Amazon’s authorized motion as an try and “block innovation and make life worse for individuals.”

In keeping with Perplexity’s assertion, Comet customers can ask their AI assistant to search out and buy objects on Amazon when logged into their accounts. The corporate emphasizes that “credentials in Comet are saved securely solely in your machine, by no means on Perplexity’s servers.”

Perplexity argues that Amazon ought to welcome simpler buying experiences as a result of they enhance transactions and buyer satisfaction. The startup claims Amazon prioritizes serving ads and sponsored outcomes over consumer comfort. The weblog put up quotes Amazon CEO Andy Jassy from the corporate’s latest earnings name stating that promoting delivers “a return on promoting spend that is very uncommon.”

The put up frames the dispute as a battle between consumer rights and company promoting pursuits. Perplexity states that “Amazon needs to remove consumer rights in order that it might probably promote extra adverts proper now and associate with AI brokers designed to reap the benefits of customers later.”

Trade context: competing visions for agentic commerce

The lawsuit arrives amid broader business stress over how AI brokers ought to work together with e-commerce platforms. Research published in September 2025 revealed that main UK and US retailers actively welcome AI brokers, with Amazon standing as the first exception implementing complete bot restrictions.

Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting, discovered that “nearly all of the retailers we communicate to are very eager to have interaction with the brand new agentic setting and, on the entire, welcome the alternatives introduced to draw and have interaction new buyer teams.”

Amazon pursues a special technique. The corporate introduced its own agentic AI capabilities on September 17, 2025, reworking Vendor Assistant from a question-answering software into an autonomous agent that screens accounts, optimizes stock, and manages promoting campaigns.

Trade professional Karsten Weide advised that “blocking private buying bots will probably be a dropping defensive battle,” predicting aggressive benefits for retailers that welcome agentic commerce. Weide indicated that “direct response promoting will fade. Model promoting will achieve in significance as we wish to affect customers earlier than they inform their agent what to do.”

Eric Seufert, promoting know-how analyst, noticed that “the basic flaw with ‘agentic commerce’ or ‘agentic promoting’ is that it violates the motivations of stores to manage the shopper relationship and monetize their first-party information with promoting.”

Authorized cures sought

Amazon requests preliminary, interim, and everlasting injunctive aid stopping Perplexity from accessing the e-commerce platform’s laptop programs utilizing AI brokers. The grievance asks the courtroom to enjoin Perplexity from “accessing, trying to entry, or helping, instructing, or offering a way for others to entry or try and entry Amazon’s protected laptop programs utilizing AI brokers.”

The lawsuit additionally seeks destruction of all Amazon information unlawfully obtained by Perplexity, identification of each Amazon account accessed by Comet, and certification below oath that Perplexity has complied with any courtroom orders.

Amazon calls for financial damages together with compensatory, statutory, and punitive damages, together with attorneys’ charges and pre- and post-judgment curiosity. The grievance states that Amazon “has suffered financial and technological damages nicely in extra of $260,000.”

The case quantity is 3:25-cv-09514, filed in america District Courtroom for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division.

Implications for advertising professionals

The lawsuit raises elementary questions on how autonomous AI programs will work together with advertising-supported platforms. Advertising and marketing professionals face uncertainty about whether or not agentic AI will disrupt established programmatic promoting fashions.

Trade veteran Ari Paparo argued in July 2025 that agentic AI may basically disrupt conventional programmatic promoting know-how by automating marketing campaign setup, concentrating on, and optimization features at the moment dealt with by demand-side platforms.

Amazon’s place suggests main platforms will resist AI brokers that bypass their promoting infrastructure. The grievance argues that Perplexity’s method “degrades the Amazon buying expertise on this and different methods to the detriment of our clients and their relationships with Amazon.”

For advertisers investing in Amazon’s platform, the dispute highlights dangers of AI-mediated commerce decreasing advert publicity. The lawsuit reveals Amazon’s willpower to take care of management over how clients work together with merchandise and ads.

The case might set up precedents for a way courts interpret laptop fraud legal guidelines within the context of AI brokers. Whether or not transparency necessities for autonomous software program signify enforceable obligations may have an effect on your complete rising agentic commerce sector.

Timeline

• November 2024: Perplexity launches “Buy with Pro” feature utilizing Amazon Prime accounts to facilitate purchases, violating Amazon’s phrases
• November 19, 2024: Amazon contacts Perplexity about unauthorized Prime account utilization; Perplexity agrees to halt AI agent deployment with out mutual settlement
• July 9, 2025: Perplexity launches Comet browser for $200-per-month Max subscribers with AI agent capabilities
• August 4, 2025: Amazon contacts Perplexity after detecting Comet’s agentic exercise disguised as Chrome browser site visitors
• August 19, 2025: Amazon implements technological barrier to dam Comet AI agent entry
• August 20, 2025: Perplexity releases up to date Comet model designed to evade Amazon’s barrier inside 24 hours
• August 20, 2025: Brave Security Team discloses immediate injection vulnerabilities in Comet browser
• September 12, 2025: Amazon contacts Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas explaining unauthorized entry
• September 16, 2025: Research reveals major retailers welcome AI agents whereas Amazon blocks them
• September 17, 2025: Amazon launches own agentic AI capabilities for sellers
• September 29, 2025: Amazon once more contacts Perplexity management about unauthorized conduct
• October 1, 2025: Perplexity announces Comet Plus subscription with writer partnerships
• October 2, 2025: Perplexity makes Comet freely available to all customers globally
• October 31, 2025: Amazon sends cease-and-desist letter demanding Perplexity cease covert AI agent entry
• November 4, 2025: Amazon recordsdata federal lawsuit; Perplexity publishes “Bullying is Not Innovation” weblog put up response

Abstract

Who: Amazon.com Providers LLC filed go well with in opposition to Perplexity AI, Inc., a Delaware company headquartered in San Francisco. The lawsuit was filed by Hueston Hennigan LLP attorneys representing Amazon within the Northern District of California.

What: Amazon alleges Perplexity violated laptop fraud legal guidelines by deploying AI brokers by its Comet browser to covertly entry Amazon’s e-commerce platform with out authorization. The grievance claims Perplexity disguised Comet as Google Chrome, evaded technological obstacles, and refused to transparently determine agentic actions regardless of repeated requests. Amazon seeks injunctive aid, destruction of unlawfully obtained information, and financial damages exceeding $260,000.

When: Amazon filed the lawsuit on November 4, 2025, following a timeline of confrontations starting November 19, 2024, when Amazon first found unauthorized exercise. The dispute escalated by 2025 as Perplexity launched Comet in July, evaded Amazon’s technological obstacles in August, ignored September warnings, and made the browser freely obtainable in October regardless of Amazon’s objections.

The place: The case was filed in america District Courtroom for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, case quantity 3:25-cv-09514. The unauthorized entry occurred by Amazon’s protected laptop programs internet hosting the Amazon Retailer, whereas Perplexity operates from its headquarters in San Francisco.

Why: Amazon argues the lawsuit protects buyer information safety, preserves the curated buying expertise, maintains promoting income streams, and establishes authorized boundaries for AI agent conduct. The e-commerce platform claims Comet’s safety vulnerabilities endanger buyer data, the AI agent degrades product discovery and supply optimization, automated site visitors imposes prices on promoting programs requiring non-human impression filtering, and Perplexity’s refusal to function transparently violates each Amazon’s phrases of service and federal laptop fraud legal guidelines. Perplexity counters that Amazon makes use of authorized intimidation to dam innovation and defend promoting income reasonably than serving buyer pursuits.