Amazon Wins Court Order To Block Perplexity's AI Shopping Bots (cnbc.com)
- Reference: 0180948408
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/10/2012222/amazon-wins-court-order-to-block-perplexitys-ai-shopping-bots
- Source link: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/10/amazon-wins-court-order-to-block-perplexitys-ai-shopping-agent.html
> In a ruling dated Monday, U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney wrote that Amazon has provided "strong evidence" that Perplexity's Comet browser accessed its website at the user's direction, but "without authorization" from the e-commerce giant. Chesney said Amazon submitted "essentially undisputed evidence" that it spent more than $5,000 to respond to the issue, including "numerous hours" where its employees worked to develop tools to block Comet from accessing its private customer tools and to prevent the tool from "future unauthorized access." "Given such evidence, the Court finds Amazon has shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its claim," Chesney wrote.
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> Chesney's ruling includes a weeklong stay to allow Perplexity to appeal the order. Amazon wrote in its original complaint that Perplexity's agents posed security risks to customer data because they "can act within protected computer systems, including private customer accounts requiring a password." The company also said Perplexity's agents created challenges for the company's advertising business, because when AI systems generate ad traffic, the impressions have to be detected and filtered out before advertisers can be billed. "This requires modifications to Amazon's advertising systems, including developing new detection mechanisms to identify and exclude automated traffic," Amazon wrote in its complaint. "These system adaptations are necessary to maintain contractual obligations with advertisers who pay only for legitimate human impressions."
[1] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/11/04/1839231/amazon-accuses-perplexity-of-computer-fraud-demands-it-stop-ai-agent-from-buying-on-its-site
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/10/amazon-wins-court-order-to-block-perplexitys-ai-shopping-agent.html
Who gives a f**k if Amazon "authorized" it? (Score:3)
An action performed on behalf of the user is per se authorized by the retailer, because the retailer is selling to the user, and authorizes the user to retrieve content from their site as part of buying things from them. It should make no difference whether that action is performed by a bot, the Amazon app, or a web browser on behalf of the user. The user intent is the same, the user is still driving the action, and the end result is the same. The only difference is how much time the user wastes in the process.
What Amazon is really saying is that by giving users control, their dogs**t search system won't be able to shove overpriced, low-quality trash at users anymore, and people won't occasionally be tricked into buying trash because they can't find what they're actually looking for.
Wah. Don't care. This is a great opportunity for the doomhammer of antitrust to come crashing down on Amazon's bulls**t.
That said, the right response is for Perplexity to support every vendor except Amazon. Make it more convenient for people to search for things and find things from everybody else but them. Then advertise their service with ads where people talk about how much money they saved by not buying things from Amazon. Sit back and watch as users write off Amazon as too greedy for their own good.
Let them fight! (Score:2)
nt.
Hollow Victory?? (Score:2)
Somewhat like the VHS era idea that taping shows was a copyright infringement, which quickly morphed into a drive for people to tape/watch shows (ads and all) I suspect this will not turn out well for Amazon.
Bots shopping is clearly the future and if Amazon is not part of it, the bots will go elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
> Bots shopping is clearly the future
Clearly the future sucks.
Reasons (Score:2)
Translation: AI shoppers makes calculating our advertising expense, difficult. Also, the human owner can cancel the order because the AI did the wrong thing.