US appeals court clears Perplexity's AI shopping agent on Amazon

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned a temporary injunction that had blocked Perplexity from using its AI agents on Amazon's platform. The deciding factor was a question of legal attribution: the appeals court found that it was users who accessed Amazon, not Perplexity itself, and therefore the startup did not violate the federal computer fraud law that prohibits accessing computers and obtaining information without permission.

The dispute began in November when Amazon sued Perplexity, accusing the startup of covertly accessing private Amazon customer accounts through its Comet browser and the AI agent embedded within it. According to Amazon's complaint, the agent could log into shopping accounts and place orders on behalf of users, posing security risks. Amazon alleged that Perplexity had ignored repeated demands to stop and called the startup's behavior a "bald attempt" to circumvent the fact that AI agents "don't have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with." In March, a federal court in California temporarily barred Perplexity from using agentic AI on Amazon, with Judge Maxine Chesney finding "strong evidence" that Perplexity accessed password-protected accounts with users' permission but without Amazon's authorization. Perplexity was also ordered to delete copies of Amazon data.

Perplexity and Amazon offered competing visions of how AI agents should operate. Amazon argued that third-party AI must operate transparently and respect established APIs, pointing to its own tools like "Buy For Me" and the "Rufus" assistant. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas countered that such requirements amounted to "bullying" and that agents acting on behalf of users should have the same rights as human users. The appeals court sided with Perplexity's framing, effectively endorsing the legal equivalence between user actions mediated by an AI agent and direct user access.

Amazon has not conceded. A company spokesperson said, "We respectfully disagree with today's decision on the preliminary injunction" and stated that Amazon remains confident in its case and is evaluating its next steps. Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said, "Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want." The underlying lawsuit remains unresolved, and this appeals court ruling addresses only the temporary injunction, not the merits of Amazon's claims. The decision marks the first ruling by a US federal appeals court on whether AI agents can lawfully access online platforms on behalf of users—a question with implications for the entire field of agentic systems, which plan, reason, and carry out tasks like browsing, shopping, and completing transactions across the web with limited human oversight.