Perplexity publicly accused Amazon of “blocking user choice with litigious bullying” over artificial intelligence (AI) assistants in a corporate blog post on Tuesday.
Perplexity, which primarily runs an AI-powered search engine, sparked Amazon’s discontent with functionality in Perplexity’s web browser, Comet. The search platform says it “uses advanced AI to search the internet in real-time, gathering insights from top-tier sources.” From there, it creates summaries for its users. Like other generative AI platforms, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity is currently promoting its ability to use AI agents to make purchases on consumers’ behalf.
Perplexity assessed that its traction with these AI-assisted commerce capabilities led Amazon to threaten it and demand that Coment’s AI assistants not use Amazon’s website.
“Amazon’s campaign to prevent users from shopping with their own AI assistants reached new heights this week, when we received a legal threat from Amazon,” according to the post, which was attributed to Perplexity’s team. “Instead of supporting innovation that lets people choose their own AI assistants for agentic shopping and other tasks, Amazon is doubling down on old tactics: blocking user choice with litigious bullying.”
Digital Commerce 360 reached out to Amazon for further comment and received a blog post Amazon published as a response to Perplexity. In its response, Amazon did not explicitly mention a legal threat or lawsuit. However, the company did assert that it “repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience.”
Amazon ranks No. 1 in Digital Commerce 360’s Top 2000 Database. The database is how Digital Commerce 360 tracks the largest North American online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales.
Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database. That database ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV).
Editor’s note: Since Digital Commerce 360 published this report, Amazon has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity. The lawsuit: Amazon.com Services LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. Its case number: 3:25-cv-09514
The legal threat Perplexity claims Amazon sent
Perplexity’s Comet browser doubles as a “personal AI assistant” or — as Perplexity states in some cases — an agent.
Agentic AI technology can autonomously complete tasks for users within pre-established parameters. Perplexity said it “received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon. This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet users.”
In addition, Perplexity posted to its blog on Nov. 4 that Amazon wants to block consumers from using their own AI assistants to shop on its platform.
“Here’s what they’re trying to prevent: You ask your Comet Assistant to find and purchase something on Amazon,” according to Perplexity. “If you’re logged in to Amazon (credentials in Comet are stored securely only in your device, never on Perplexity’s servers), the Comet Assistant quickly finds and purchases the item for you, saving you time for more important tasks. Or, you can ask it to compare options and purchase the best one for your needs.”
The process in ecommerce is generally referred to as “agentic commerce.”
“Amazon should love this,” Perplexity said. “Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn’t care. They’re more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers.”
Amazon has responded with a single paragraph published the same day. The statement, attributed to Amazon staff, asserts that it is “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.”
That “helps ensure a positive customer experience” and is how others operate, according to Amazon. Amazon offered the examples of food-delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for, as well as delivery service apps and the stores from which those services deliver.
“Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides,” Amazon’s statement read.
Perplexity’s bullying claims
Perplexity framed Amazon’s position as “a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies.”
Furthermore, Perplexity posited that “the point of technology is to make life better for people” and that bullying is “when large corporations use legal threats and intimidation to block innovation and make life worse for people.”
The tech company claimed all retailers should “celebrate the art” of merchandising, which includes customer experiences in the shopping journey. Perplexity noted it is “dangerous to confuse consumer experience with consumer exploitation.”
“Users want AI they can trust, and they want AI Assistants that work on their behalf and no one else’s,” according to Perplexity.
It laid out what it considers three key aspects of the future of AI agents:
- Private. Perplexity said publishers and corporations “have no right to discriminate against users based on which AI they’ve chosen to represent that.” It added that users must have the right to choose technologies that represent them. Additionally, “privacy and freedom of choice depend on this.”
- Personal. “Your user agent works for you, not for Perplexity, and certainly not for Amazon.” Perplexity said machine learning and algorithms have long been weapons in the hands of large corporations, “deployed to serve ads and manipulate what you see, experience, and purchase. The transformative promise of [large language models] is that they put power back in the hands of people. Agentic AI marks a meaningful shift: users can finally regain control of their online experiences.”
- Powerful. According to Perplexity, users have “a right to select high-performing AI agents.” It asserted that corporations should not be able to pressure users to adopt certain technology as a means “to deliver more ad revenue.”
‘Perplexity will not be intimidated’
“The rise of agentic AI presents a choice,” Perplexity’s team stated in closing its blog post targeting Amazon.
It posed a rhetorical question to readers, asking if that technology will empower individual users or corporations. Additionally, Perplexity framed itself as “fighting for the rights of users.”
“Amazon also forgets how it got so big,” Perplexity’s team wrote. “Users love it. They want good products, at a low price, delivered fast. Agentic shopping is the natural evolution of this promise, and people already demand it.”
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