By Luis Rijo
Publication Date: 2025-11-09 21:16:00
Amazon filed a federal lawsuit against Perplexity AI on November 4, 2025, alleging the startup deployed covert artificial intelligence agents into the e-commerce platform’s systems without authorization. The complaint, filed in the Northern District of California, marks the first time Amazon has taken legal action against an AI company over autonomous shopping agents.
The lawsuit centers on Perplexity’s Comet browser, which Amazon claims disguises itself as Google Chrome while enabling AI agents to access private customer accounts and make purchases on behalf of users. According to the complaint, Perplexity violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act by refusing to transparently identify its agentic activities after repeated requests from Amazon.
Technical deception alleged in court filings
Amazon alleges Perplexity configured Comet to transmit the same user-agent string used by Google Chrome, making the AI agent appear as though a human customer was browsing Amazon’s website. The complaint states that “when the Comet AI agent accesses the Amazon Store, it does not use a unique browser identifier…
