Dive Brief:
- In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Northern California, Amazon sued Perplexity to stop its Comet AI agents from accessing Amazon’s e-commerce website in what it alleges to be a covert manner. The lawsuit follows a Friday cease and desist letter in which Amazon alleged Perplexity is “disguising Comet as a Google Chrome browser” and refusing to identify Comet AI agents when operating in the Amazon Store, making purchases on behalf of users without authorization.
- Amazon claims Perplexity’s covert AI agents are in violation of computer fraud and abuse statutes, adding it may be putting the security of customer data at risk, does not allow users to shop for the best prices and allegedly misappropriated Prime membership benefits to users. Amazon is requesting compensatory damages and injunctive relief.
- Perplexity says the move from Amazon represents a “threat to user choice” and asserted that Amazon “does not believe in your right to hire labor, to have an assistant or an employee acting on your behalf,” per a Tuesday company post.
Dive Insight:
Amazon’s legal move against Perplexity doesn’t appear to be a full indictment against third-party agentic commerce, but moreso an example of how Amazon wants to work with external agents on its own terms.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, Amazon objected to Comet offering a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience,” something CEO Andy Jassy also stressed on an earnings call last week.
On that call, Jassy expressed excitement about agentic commerce, calling out Amazon’s AI agent called Rufus as an indication of its investment in the space. However, he was also open to working with external partners who could maintain a certain customer experience.
“We're also having conversations with and expect over time to partner with third-party agents,” Jassy said. “And today, search engines are a very small part of our referral traffic, and third-party agents are a very small subset of that. But I do think that we will find ways to partner. We have to find a way, though, that makes the customer experience good. Right now, I would say the customer experience is not. There's no personalization, there's no shopping history, the delivery estimates are frequently wrong, the prices are often wrong.”
As it relates to Perplexity’s AI shopping agents, Amazon said it has repeatedly asked the tech company to remove Amazon from the Comet experience.
“We think it’s 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,” the mass e-commerce company said in its Tuesday statement.
Perplexity contends that users’ Amazon login credentials are stored securely when in use by Comet and that “Amazon should love” Comet’s ability to easily purchase products and compare options for shoppers.
“But Amazon doesn’t care,” Perplexity said in its post. “They’re more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers.”
The battle between both companies comes as retailers bet big on generative AI to streamline operations. Consumers are turning to AI chatbots to help discover new products and even make purchases, with OpenAI launching a checkout functionality within ChatGPT earlier this year.
