Amazon has filed a lawsuit against Perplexity in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to block the startup’s Comet browser agent from purchasing items on its site for users.

The case centres on whether third-party AI agents should identify themselves when acting on behalf of customers and whether they can access platforms that have objected to such activity.

In court filings and public statements, Amazon alleges Perplexity covertly accessed customer accounts and masked automated behaviour as human browsing, breaching its terms of service and creating security risks. “Perplexity’s misconduct must end,” Amazon said in the complaint, adding: “Perplexity is not allowed to go where it has been expressly told it cannot; that Perplexity’s trespass involves code rather than a lockpick makes it no less unlawful.” The company also argued the agent provides a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience.”

Amazon published a cease-and-desist statement outlining its position: “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,” said spokesperson Lara Hendrickson. “It is how others operate, including food delivery apps… and online travel agencies.” Amazon said it has “repeatedly requested” that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience.

Perplexity rejected the claims, casting Amazon’s actions as an effort to stifle competition and protect advertising revenue. “Bullying is when large corporations use legal threats and intimidation to block innovation and make life worse for people,” the company wrote in a blog post titled “Bullying is Not Innovation.”

Perplexity argued user agents act with the same permissions as the human directing them, stating credentials are stored locally and assistants “work only at your specific request, and act solely on your behalf.” Perplexity’s spokesperson added: “This is like if you went to a store and the store only allowed you to hire a personal shopper who worked for the store.”

Perplexity’s co-founder and chief executive officer Aravind Srinivas told Bloomberg: “It’s a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people,” and said customers should be free to choose their preferred shopping assistant. Srinivas said Comet is not training or scraping Amazon’s data, but “only taking actions required to make purchases at a user’s bidding.”

Amazon has its own agent projects, including Rufus and a “Buy For Me” feature in testing. On a recent earnings call, Amazon’s chief executive officer Andy Jassy said the customer experience with external shopping agents is “not good,” though “we will find ways to partner” and are having “conversations” with third-party builders.

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