Amazon Tries to Block Perplexity’s AI Agents From Shopping on Its Website

In a clash that highlights growing tensions between tech giants and AI startups, Amazon has reportedly sent a legal notice to Perplexity AI, demanding it stop enabling AI-driven shopping on its platform.

In a strongly worded blog post titled “Bullying is Not Innovation,” Perplexity AI accused Amazon of using its dominant market position to suppress innovation. The conflict centers on Perplexity’s Comet browser, which allows users to deploy AI agents that autonomously compare and purchase items on Amazon.

According to Perplexity, Amazon sent an “aggressive legal threat” demanding that Perplexity forbid such agents from making purchases on the platform.

"We would be happy to work together with Amazon to figure out a win-win outcome for both us and them. But attempts to block our Comet Assistant on Amazon and hurt our users – we will have to stand up for them and not get bullied by Amazon," Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas wrote in a social media post.

Perplexity argues that the Comet Assistant acts with the same credentials as its user, meaning any purchase it makes is simply a user-directed action. Amazon, however, maintains that such AI agents violate its terms of service and could harm the customer experience.

"Amazon should love this. 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," Perplexity wrote in the blog post.

The dispute underscores a larger issue — as AI agents become more capable, they threaten to upend the control big platforms like Amazon hold over how users interact and shop online.

Previously, Cloudflare unveiled evidence that Perplexity AI—a conversational search engine—engaged in stealth crawling, bypassing standard web constraints intended to block automated access.

"Although Perplexity initially crawls from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences," Cloudflare said.