By Charlotte Tobitt
Publication Date: 2026-04-30 15:00:00
Major digital news publishers in the US have backed Amazon in its lawsuit against Perplexity, saying unauthorised AI agent access to content should be blocked.
Amazon sued Perplexity in November, arguing the AI start-up was accessing its shopping website and user accounts without permission.
A California judge temporarily blocked Perplexity from accessing Amazon’s website via a preliminary injunction issued in March.
Perplexity is now appealing that decision. It has argued that its AI agents are “much more transparent and limited” than Amazon’s own use of agentic AI to complete transactions on third-party retailer sites.
Amazon alleges that Perplexity has “purposely configured” Comet AI so that when the AI tool is deployed on behalf of an Amazon customer, “Perplexity falsely identifies its Comet AI agent activity as coming from Google Chrome, which is a separate, widely used web browser owned by Google. As a result, Perplexity’s Comet AI agent covertly poses as a human customer shopping in the Amazon Store on a Google Chrome browser.”
It said this poses “considerable risks” to Amazon customers including making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Amazon said it told Perplexity executives at least five times between November 2024 and October 2025 that their AI agents may not covertly…
