Perplexity’s Appeal Win Over Amazon Keeps Hacking Liability Risk

Amazon.com Inc.’s recently lost appellate bid to ban Perplexity AI’s shopping agent still leaves the e-commerce giant with options to keep the assistant off its platform.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction against Perplexity Tuesday, holding that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on its Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim because users, not Perplexity, accessed Amazon’s systems with the tool’s assistance.

The court, however, stressed that its opinion didn’t “establish a new legal regime governing agentic AI” and signaled Amazon could prevail if evidence ultimately shows Perplexity controlled the agent enough for it …