By Rohit Singh
Publication Date: 2026-08-05 13:09:00
- Access the court document on the AI agents verdict here
A US appeals court has lifted a temporary ban on Perplexity AI’s shopping agent on Amazon. It ruled that Amazon is unlikely to prove that Perplexity violated the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The decision is among the first appellate rulings on whether AI agents can legally access online platforms on behalf of users. The ruling could shape how agentic AI tools interact with websites in the future.
The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals held that, based on the current record, Amazon’s users, not Perplexity, accessed Amazon’s platform. They did so while using Perplexity’s AI assistant. The court said Perplexity was therefore unlikely to have “accessed” Amazon’s computers within the meaning of the CFAA. It also vacated the preliminary injunction granted by a lower court and sent the case back for further proceedings.
Court Rejects Amazon’s Access Argument: The dispute centres on Perplexity’s Comet browser. It includes an AI assistant that can browse websites and complete shopping tasks at a user’s direction. Amazon argued that the AI agent unlawfully entered its systems. It also alleged that the AI assistant accessed users’ password-protected accounts without permission. Amazon further claimed that the tool created security risks by masking its activity as ordinary web browsing. It also alleged that Perplexity ignored repeated requests to stop using the tool on Amazon.
