Amazon Sends Cease-and-Desist to Perplexity Over AI Agent Purchases

In an early showdown over the rise of agentic browsers, Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI demanding that its Comet assistant stop making purchases on the site. Amazon accused the AI search startup of disguising bots as human shoppers and violating its terms of service. The e-commerce giant claimed that Perplexity’s agent “degraded the Amazon shopping experience” and introduced privacy risks by acting on users’ behalf without disclosure, according to a letter first reported by Bloomberg.

Perplexity pushed back against Amazon’s claims, calling them a “bullying tactic.” A company spokesperson told Decrypt, “Amazon’s claims are typical legal bluster and completely unfounded.” They likened Amazon’s position to saying, “What if stores said you can only hire a personal shopper who works for the store? That’s not a personal shopper, it’s a sales associate.”

Agentic browsers embed autonomous AI agents that act on the user’s behalf, automating tasks like filling out forms, booking travel, or making purchases without manual clicks. Recent innovations include Perplexity AI’s Comet, OpenAI’s ChatGPT Atlas, BrowserOS, and Opera Neon. In September, OpenAI introduced an 'Instant Checkout' feature in ChatGPT, enabling AI agents to complete purchases via chat after earlier in-app shopping integrations.

In a blog post titled “Bullying Is Not Innovation,” Perplexity called Amazon’s legal threat “dangerous” and framed the dispute as a fight over user autonomy. “It’s dangerous to confuse consumer experience with consumer exploitation,” the company wrote. Perplexity argued that users should have the right to “hire their own digital assistants” and that “publishers and corporations have no right to discriminate against users based on which AI they’ve chosen to represent them.”

Amazon defended its stance, emphasizing that third-party AI agents must operate transparently and in cooperation with businesses. “We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate,” Amazon said in a statement. Additionally, it requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, citing degraded shopping and customer service experiences.

Perplexity maintained that Comet, when making purchases, only uses the customer’s own credentials stored locally on their device rather than on Perplexity’s servers. The company accused Amazon of prioritizing “serving ads and influencing purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers” over improving customer experience. Perplexity further argued that its agents are designed to “act solely on the user’s behalf.”

Ironically, Perplexity is a major customer of Amazon Web Services (AWS), running its infrastructure on AWS, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is an investor in Perplexity. This conflict pits two intertwined companies against each other in a battle that could define who controls the next era of web automation. For now, the cease-and-desist order marks one of the first formal challenges to how AI browsers operate when they search, click, and shop online. “The future of agentic commerce will depend on users’ right to choose and trust their own AI agents,” a Perplexity spokesperson said.