Perplexity Comet hurtling toward Amazon ban
- Reference: 1773271578
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/03/11/perplexity_comet_amazon_ban/
- Source link:
But the ban won't take effect immediately. The court on Monday issued an administrative stay of its [1]order [PDF] for seven days to allow Perplexity to seek relief from the US Court of Appeals, which the company [2]intends to do [PDF].
"Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want," a company spokesman told The Register.
[3]
Nonetheless, the court order casts a shadow on the widely hyped agent economy that imagines software agents visiting websites and buying things on behalf of human users. It finds that Amazon is likely to succeed in its claims that Perplexity has violated federal and state computer fraud laws by disguising its bot and breaking Amazon's site access rules.
[4]
[5]
The judge's take on the case suggests automated e-commerce transactions will require negotiation and agreements as opposed to the tech industry's preference to move fast and break things. Evidence of this can be seen in eBay's decision earlier this year to update its user agreement to [6]ban shopping bots .
The preliminary injunction, if not derailed through appeal, requires Perplexity to stop its AI agent from accessing Amazon’s protected systems and destroy data obtained through those accesses.
When is a customer not a customer?
Amazon [7]sued [PDF] Perplexity last November, [8]arguing that the AI company deliberately disguised its automated browser to make it look like a customer using Chrome. In doing so, the biz argues, Perplexity is violating Amazon's rules prohibiting automated data gathering and is creating a security risk by relying on user credentials.
At the time, Amazon accused Perplexity of ignoring its cease-and-desist demands and putting customers at risk by requiring them to expose their login details to a browser with documented security vulnerabilities.
[9]
"When customers who use the Comet AI agent cannot trust that their personal account information is secure, or when they suffer from a degraded shopping experience, their confidence in the Amazon brand is diminished," Amazon's attorneys said in the complaint. "Perplexity's interference with Amazon's ability to offer a secure and positive customer experience, and the corresponding erosion in customer trust, is a quintessential irreparable harm."
[10]AI has made the Command Line Interface more important and powerful than ever before
[11]Most chatbots will help plan school shootings and other violence, study shows
[12]Iran plots 'infrastructure warfare' against US tech giants
[13]Meta, international cops use handcuffs and AI to stop scammers
Perplexity pushed back in a [14]blog post that contended a software agent is the equivalent of a human employee.
"Today, Amazon announced it does not believe in your right to hire labor, to have an assistant or an employee acting on your behalf," the company said in response to Amazon's litigation last November. "This isn't a reasonable legal position, it's a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people."
In its [15]opposition/response [PDF] to Amazon's request for a preliminary injunction, Perplexity argues that the injunction should not be granted because Amazon has not shown that its fraud claims are likely to succeed.
US District Judge Maxine Chesney disagrees.
[16]
In her order, she wrote, "Amazon has provided strong evidence that Perplexity, through its Comet browser, accesses with the Amazon user's permission but without authorization by Amazon, the user's password-protected account … thereby obtaining information as to the user's private Amazon account information, and that such information is transmitted to Perplexity's servers for the purpose of conducting said user's requested tasks."
And she said the evidence Amazon has provided about the expense incurred trying to thwart Perplexity's Comet from accessing its site is "essentially undisputed."
"[T]he Court has found Amazon, not Perplexity, is likely to succeed on the merits and that Amazon will face irreparable harm absent preliminary relief," the judge concluded. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.459191/gov.uscourts.cand.459191.81.0.pdf
[2] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.459191/gov.uscourts.cand.459191.82.0.pdf
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2abJIcelY7w0Zk06gO5xn8AAAAtc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44abJIcelY7w0Zk06gO5xn8AAAAtc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33abJIcelY7w0Zk06gO5xn8AAAAtc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/22/ebay_updates_legalese_to_ban/
[7] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.459191/gov.uscourts.cand.459191.1.0_3.pdf
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/05/amazon_perplexity_comet_legal_threat/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44abJIcelY7w0Zk06gO5xn8AAAAtc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/11/ai_needs_command_line_interface/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/11/chatbot_violence_countering_digital_hate_study/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/11/iran_threatens_us_tech_companies/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/11/meta_international_cops_ai_scammers/
[14] https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/bullying-is-not-innovation
[15] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.459191/gov.uscourts.cand.459191.35.0.pdf
[16] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33abJIcelY7w0Zk06gO5xn8AAAAtc&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
But who AI grifts the AI grifters?
Won't be long before the court systems use AI instead of human judges
Guess how their judgements will fall?
(Actually, this will properly elevate the programmers to their deserved position.)
If the access is from a browser on the user's machine then the only things identifying it as a bot are the behaviour and the user agent string. I trust my access credentials to my browser of choice, so if a user wants to risk theirs with an AI bot then it's at their own risk. I can see Amazon's point if the bot/browser is hammering the site with a lot of accesses that far exceed what a human would do when browsing, but otherwise if it's a Chromium-based browser, what's the effective difference from their end compared to using Chrome, Vivaldi or Brave? I'd say that using Chrome probably leaks way more information than some of the others.
"The Court has found Amazon, not Perplexity, is likely to succeed on the merits and that Amazon will face irreparable harm compromise of its monopoly power over consumers and secondary vendors absent preliminary relief,"
FTFY.
Yeah, Envive puts it like this: " AI-powered agents [...] [1]autonomously perform commerce-related tasks : shopping, price comparison, bargaining , and purchasing ". The bargaining part in particular is in our favor and much needed to counter the mountain of algorithmic manipulations effected by e-commerce sites (including tavel, lodging, vehicle rental, ...) that are so stacked against our best interests and wallets.
They go on that " The traditional path — awareness, consideration, decision, purchase — gets compressed into seconds. Brands that rely on multi-touch attribution, retargeting campaigns, and conversion optimization suddenly face agents that bypass most of these touchpoints entirely. " -- and that's exactly what we need (and want), imho: less price-gouging crookery!
This judge's ruling was complete hogwash here, sold to big money, against we the peoples -- and we shouldn't even need an AI shopping agent to be freed from this tyranny in the first place for doggone's sake!
[1] https://www.envive.ai/post/how-perplexity-comet-will-change-agentic-commerce
Devils Advocate
scalper bots doing automated shopping vs my grandparents trying to find the buy button
I’m not sure we’re ready to encourage fully automated shopping experiences at this scale - that said, it’s coming… (already here)
This is one of those cases where I think whoever wins, we all wind up losing.
If Amazon wins, there won't be any AI allowed there except those that Amazon has agreements with. Or Amazon's own AI, designed to encourage purchase of whatever Amazon wants to sell more of this week.
If Perplexity wins, shopping websites could wind up working like Ticketmaster and it's 'anti-scalping-bot proofing' that doesn't actually stop bots or scalpers.
Thanks for the humour
"... they suffer from a degraded shopping experience, their confidence in the Amazon brand is diminished,"
I needed a laugh, thanks Amazon.