According to Silicon Republic, Amazon filed a lawsuit against Perplexity on November 4 in San Francisco federal court, demanding the AI company stop allowing its Comet agents to make purchases for users on Amazon’s platform. The retail giant claims Perplexity is committing “computer fraud” by failing to disclose when Comet is shopping on behalf of real users, violating Amazon’s terms of service that prohibit “any use of data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.” Perplexity spokesperson Beejoli Shah fired back, calling Amazon a “bully” and arguing that AI user agents should be treated like any other user. This legal confrontation comes just after PayPal struck a deal with OpenAI to enable instant payments within ChatGPT, signaling growing momentum behind agentic shopping technology.
The real stakes in this fight
Here’s the thing – this lawsuit isn’t really about terms of service violations or computer fraud. It’s about who controls the future of shopping. Amazon makes billions from advertising and promoted placements on its site. If AI agents start making purchases automatically based on price and reviews without ever seeing those ads, that revenue stream evaporates overnight.
Perplexity makes a compelling argument in their blog post that user agents are just extensions of users with the same permissions. But Amazon sees them as “intruders” using “code rather than a lockpick.” Both sides have valid points, but the timing suggests Amazon sees this technology as an existential threat that’s arriving faster than expected.
Where this is all heading
Basically, we’re witnessing the opening shots in what will become a massive battle between platform companies and AI providers. Think about it – if your AI assistant can comparison shop across multiple sites and complete purchases automatically, why would you ever browse Amazon’s carefully curated storefront again?
The PayPal-OpenAI deal last week shows this isn’t just theoretical anymore. Major players are building the infrastructure for agentic shopping to become mainstream. Amazon’s lawsuit is essentially a defensive move to protect their business model before it gets disrupted. But can you really stop technological progress with legal threats?
I think we’re going to see more of these conflicts as AI capabilities advance. Retailers, travel sites, food delivery platforms – anyone who depends on users interacting with their interface has reason to worry. The question isn’t whether agentic shopping will happen, but how platforms will adapt when their customers start sending AI proxies instead of visiting directly.
