Perplexity Asks Federal Court to Lift Amazon Shopping Agent Ban

Perplexity is arguing that directing its AI agent to shop on Amazon is no different from opening a browser and visiting the site. Amazon has until April 22 to respond.

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Maxine Chesney first issued the injunction on March 9, finding Amazon likely to win its claim that Comet accessed its platform without authorization. A stay on the ban was granted on Monday (March 30), pending appeal.

The Filing

In its appellate filing, Perplexity argued its users accessed Amazon through Comet, not Perplexity itself.

“A Comet user accessing Amazon from her own computer is no more equivalent to Perplexity accessing Amazon than a Safari user accessing Amazon from her own computer is equivalent to Apple accessing Amazon,” the company wrote.

Perplexity also argued that Amazon produced no evidence of actual harm during the eight months Comet operated freely: no lost sales, no decreased traffic and no record of a dissatisfied customer.

The dispute began in November, when Amazon sued Perplexity, alleging that Comet accessed password-protected customer accounts while disguising itself as a Google Chrome browser and ignored repeated warnings to stop, according to a March 10 report from The Verge. Perplexity called the lawsuit a competitive tactic and published a response titled “Bullying is Not Innovation.”

Larger Fight Over Who Controls the Shopping Experience

Judge Chesney’s March 9 order found that Comet accessed accounts with user permission but not Amazon authorization, treating them as distinct legal requirements. According to JD Supra, the court relied on a previous case, Facebook v. Power Ventures, to conclude that Amazon’s cease-and-desist letter was enough to end any access rights Perplexity could claim through its users. Perplexity argued that outcome gives any platform the ability to block outside agents, regardless of what users want.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon’s win is being read across the retail industry as a signal that platforms may be able to keep third-party AI agents away from their customers, in part because those agents bypass the ads and sponsored listings that drive revenue. Amazon generated roughly $68.6 billion in advertising revenue in 2025 and argued in its complaint that filtering out Comet’s automated traffic required building new detection systems, according to CNBC.

In response, Perplexity told the court: “AI agents don’t have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with.”

Amazon has blocked dozens of outside agents from its platform, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, while building out its own shopping assistant Rufus, which drove nearly $12 billion in incremental annualized sales in 2025, as the company disclosed in February earnings materials.

Walmart and Target have taken a different approach, testing ways to work with third-party AI shopping tools while maintaining their own role in the transaction, as previously covered by PYMNTS.

Consumer behavior is already moving in the direction both companies are competing to capture. According to PYMNTS Intelligence, 70% of consumers say they are open to using AI agents for shopping, and nearly half say they would allow an agent to handle both routine and larger purchases on their behalf.

More than half of consumers who rely primarily on AI platforms prefer to complete purchases inside those environments rather than hand off to a retailer’s site. The appeals court ruling will set the terms for whether that is possible on the country’s largest shopping platform.