Court lifts ban on Perplexity AI shopping on Amazon

A US appeals court has cleared the way for AI shopping agents to operate on Amazon, overturning a previous injunction that had barred Perplexity’s Comet tool from the platform. The ruling marks a significant early victory for the growing wave of software designed to browse and purchase goods on behalf of users, regardless of whether retailers approve.

The Ninth Circuit determined that Amazon’s central argument did not withstand scrutiny. Since Perplexity’s Comet agent only springs into action when explicitly instructed by a user, the court concluded that it is the user, rather than Perplexity itself, who is initiating access to Amazon’s servers. This distinction proved pivotal.

Comet is the built-in agent within Perplexity’s AI-powered browser. When directed at a product, it can navigate Amazon’s interface and complete a transaction from start to finish, the kind of autonomous errand that a host of AI companies believe will eventually replace conventional online shopping habits.

Amazon had contended that the agent constituted unauthorized access, alleging that Perplexity disguised Comet as a standard Chrome browser to evade detection. The retailer also pointed to a 2024 agreement in which Perplexity had supposedly consented to pause its agentic shopping features.

Perplexity framed the dispute as a question of consumer control, arguing that users should be free to employ whatever software they choose when visiting websites they are already entitled to access. The company positioned itself as defending the autonomy of the shopper rather than challenging Amazon’s authority over its own platform.

At the heart of the case was a decades-old piece of legislation. Amazon relied on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a law drafted for an era of hacking that bears little resemblance to modern agentic commerce. The court found that a tool executing a user’s explicit commands does not fit the statute’s definition of unauthorized access.

The reasoning behind the decision carries more weight than the immediate outcome. If an agent operating under a user’s direction is legally indistinguishable from the user, then platforms lose one of their most effective mechanisms for blocking third-party bots. The pathway for agentic commerce suddenly opens wide.

For Amazon, that prospect is deeply troubling. The company has invested heavily in crafting a shopping experience it fully controls, from search rankings to product recommendations. An agent that bypasses these layers strips away the retailer’s influence and the advertising revenue that comes with it.

Amazon has not been idle in response. It is developing its own agentic capabilities, embedding Alexa directly into the search bar as it races to own the shopping agent space rather than being circumvented by competitors’ tools.

The transformation is already visible in other markets. China’s largest platforms have moved furthest, replacing traditional search bars with AI agents that handle shopping tasks for users, offering a glimpse of what Western retail may soon face.

The technical approaches are aligning as well. Alibaba has integrated its proprietary model directly into Taobao for seamless end-to-end agentic shopping, the kind of first-party integration Amazon would undoubtedly prefer to a rival’s bot navigating its aisles.

The legal battle is far from finished. Amazon expressed continued confidence in its position and said it is evaluating next steps, which could include requesting a rehearing or petitioning the Supreme Court. The underlying lawsuit remains active in a San Francisco court.

Still, an appellate ruling carries considerable influence. It provides other agent developers with a framework for arguing that acting on behalf of a user does not constitute hacking, and it signals to platforms that sweeping prohibitions may not withstand judicial review.

The decision also brings a larger, unresolved question into sharper focus. When an agent causes harm rather than convenience, liability remains unclear. Treating the agent as an extension of the user has implications that reach far beyond a simple shopping transaction.

The commercial stakes are just as high as the legal ones. Retail media has emerged as one of Amazon’s fastest-growing profit centers, and an agent that ignores sponsored listings in favor of the lowest-priced option threatens the advertising economics that underpin much of that business model.

The underlying tension is structural. Websites were designed for human interaction, with users clicking through pages at a deliberate pace. A bot that reads and purchases at machine speed strains both the technical architecture and the commercial assumptions built into those platforms.

For the moment, the agents hold the advantage. A federal appeals court has prevented the world’s largest retailer from excluding them, in a ruling whose significance may extend far beyond what first meets the eye.