A US Court has halted a ruling stopping AI shopping agents owned by AI search engine Perplexity from crawling the Amazon website.
The marketplace giant sued Perplexity last November for allegedly accessing its platform secretly through its AI browser Comet and that Perplexity tried to disguise its AI agent as a human.
Amazon claims Perplexity’s AI agent crawling on its platform violated its terms of service, caused security risks for customer data, ruined the customer’s shopping experience and misused Prime benefits.
Amazon says Perplexity’s agent crawling its website also bypasses customers seeing ads on its platform, impacting its business model.
In response, Perplexity said Amazon is “bullying” and trying to protect its monopoly on ads, saying consumers should have the freedom to choose which AI agent they want to shop with.
A US judge granted Amazon an injunction to block Perplexity’s agents from accessing password protected areas of the website.
However, a federal court issued a temporary stay, allowing the agents to operate while an appeal is considered.
AI Agents as a ‘Digital Proxy’
The legal dispute between Perplexity and Amazon sheds light on possible legal debates that could ensue as AI and agentic commerce becomes more commonplace.
Unlike ever before, now consumers can use AI agents to browse for products and services, book flights and manage their accounts – forcing ecommerce businesses to question whether agents have the legal right to be a digital proxy on behalf of the customer.
E-commerce websites argue their Terms of Service (ToS) are a contract with a human, meaning their ToS is broken when agents navigate password protected areas.
US Courts are now grappling with the debate around whether it constitutes as unauthorised if an agent logs into a person’s account, even if they’ve given permission.
