By Greg Otto
Publication Date: 2026-03-17 19:49:00
A federal appeals court has temporarily put on hold a California judge’s order that would have blocked Perplexity AI from using an AI-powered shopping agent on Amazon, as the case moves forward in a dispute over who controls automated activity inside customer accounts.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday granted Perplexity an administrative stay, pausing the injunction while the court considers the company’s request for a longer pause during its appeal. The lower-court order had been set to take effect within days.
Amazon sued Perplexity in November, alleging the startup’s Comet browser and associated AI agent accessed password-protected portions of Amazon customer accounts without Amazon’s authorization, even when users allowed the tool to act for them. Amazon also accused Perplexity of disguising automated activity as human browsing and of ignoring repeated demands to stop.
U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney in San Francisco granted Amazon’s request for a preliminary injunction on March 9. She wrote that Amazon was likely to succeed on claims under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. Chesney said Amazon had provided strong evidence that Perplexity accessed accounts “with the Amazon user’s permission but without authorization by Amazon.”
Chesney’s order required Perplexity to prohibit Comet from accessing or attempting to access Amazon user…
