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Amazon Accuses Perplexity of Computer Fraud, Demands It Stop AI Agent From Buying On Its Site (bloomberg.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the one-click-too-far dept.
Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity AI demanding that the AI search startup stop allowing its AI browser agent, Comet, to make purchases online for users. From a report: The e-commerce giant is accusing Perplexity of committing computer fraud by failing to disclose when its AI agent is shopping on a user's behalf, in violation of Amazon's terms of service, according to people familiar with the letter sent on Friday. The document also said Perplexity's tool degraded the Amazon shopping experience and introduced privacy vulnerabilities, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

In response, Perplexity said Amazon is bullying a smaller competitor with a rival AI agent shopping product. The clash between Amazon and Perplexity offers an early glimpse into a looming debate over how to handle the proliferation of so-called AI agents that field more complex tasks online for users, including shopping. Like OpenAI and Alphabet's Google, Perplexity has pushed to rethink the traditional web browser around AI, with the goal of having it streamline more actions for users, such as drafting emails and conducting research.

Amazon Accuses Perplexity of Computer Fraud, Demands It Stop AI Agent From Buying On Its Site More | Reply

Amazon Accuses Perplexity of Computer Fraud, Demands It Stop AI Agent From Buying On Its Site

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  • If only... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @01:53PM (#65773110)
    If only they could both lose this fight.

  • Amazon wants to sell products, third party companies rely on selling their products via amazon. Now you doesn't want you to buy products through them if it's via another app?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Probably most of these purchases get returned. You know what "AI" is like.

      • Re:What do they care? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:22PM (#65773216)

        This is literally the same strat Amazon has. They want Alexa to buy products unprompted for Prime users as well, based on the customer's previous buying habits. They're just annoyed someone else is doing it.

        • Exactly. And that by using an AI agent it means they can't monetize with advertisements because the AI is never going to click such. Likely not ideal for their analytics either.

          • Re:What do they care? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:52PM (#65773286)

            ...using an AI agent it means they can't monetize with advertisements because the AI is never going to click such

            The third-party AI might also do a better job (from the customer's perspective) depending on the data it has vs. Alexa, because the third-party AI can make buying decisions based solely on the information it has on the user. As someone else mentioned, the third-party AI wont favor brands/items/sellers Amazon is promoting.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            I expect that is what this is really about. Amazon wants to watch you shop and Amazon wants to influence how you shop by the order it presents results to you, what related items it shows you, various pricing signals, etc.

            All that breaks down if some AI agent is sifting the results Amazon returns. The lose the opportunity to gauge your real interest by how long you linger on a product page, they lose the opportunity to cross sell you, they can't try out A/B strategies on you if AI is doing your shopping.

            Ex

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              Worse than that, if the buyer is only interacting with the AI, the AI could easily shop elsewhere. The customer, rather than thinking "I need to buy this, let's see what they have on amazon", could come to think "I need to buy this, let's ask the AI to get for me", which might be amazon today, but could easily change, for good reasons or even maybe because of a deal between the AI and some shopping site.

            • Agreed, but if an AI can figure out the good products from the bad in Amazon's crappy search results, then it's got some real value when dealing with Amazon. It's getting worse, so unless Amazon sort it out, a lot more of us are going to be using AI search tools (or maybe agents) to do our shopping. Maybe those tools will recommend a few other stores along the way too - Amazon's not always the cheapest/fastest.

      • I think there's a bigger issue at play. A sale is a legal contract involving two parties each exchanging something with each other. If one of those parties is non-human that immediately creates a question as to whether it can form a valid contract in the first place.

        I'm sure someone has just had the bright idea to chime in about corporations not being people but being able to enter into contracts without considering why it would be horrible if they weren't able to, while also simultaneously failing to co

        • Re:What do they care? (Score:4, Informative)

          by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @03:19PM (#65773338) Journal

          If I tell you to buy 'Y' from Amazon using my account, I have given authorization for that purchase even though it is not me, the owner of the account, making the purchase.

          In a similar fashion, Perplexity can claim the user telling their software to make the purchase is no different. That it is not a human is irrelevant. The owner of the account has given permission to make the purchases.

        • Ultimately responsibility will be some distribution between Perplexity itself and the 'owner' of the robot.

          Think about those lunatics who keep running people over with Tesla autopilot. Who is responsble? Well its not the car, its just an object, not a subject. The driver has some responsibility because he authorized the car to do its autopiliot, and Tesla has some responsibility, because its autopilot is shit.

          In this case the customer authorizes perplexity to do this, and perplexity is the one doing it, via

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Some possibilities:
      -The agent buys the wrong thing and Amazon sees a substantially higher rate of returns or other bad customer feedback
      -The agent buys one thing despite Amazon search results trying to push a different option
      -Amazon's upsell for "you may also like" is tanked by the agentic purchaasing.

      • Re:What do they care? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @04:01PM (#65773452)

        "-The agent buys one thing despite Amazon search results trying to push a different option"

        Exactly THIS!

        I don't use an agent but I use AI to find the exact thing I want on Amazon and it gives me the link and I buy it, without having to wade to the crap that Amazon's "search" throws at me.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tom ( 822 )

          I don't use an agent but I use AI to find the exact thing I want on Amazon and it gives me the link and I buy it, without having to wade to the crap that Amazon's "search" throws at me.

          Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that over time Amazon's search feature has enshitified. If that's the correct verb. It used to be fairly good. These days, nah, unless I'm looking for a book or other product from Amazon directly, as a search for the marketplace it's crap.

          And since it used to be better, something must be responsible for that. Greed, most likely.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      They care because Amazon enshitification resulted in getting revenue not from just selling, but also showing ads. If you shop with AI, you do not see Amazon ads.

      • Why can't AI look at and ignore ads for me? Why do I have to do all the ignoring myself?
          An even better AI could do the 'being infuriated by stupid ads' part as well. I thought these AI agents were supposed to do the tedious repetitive tasks for me, have I turned over two pages by accident?

    • My guess is they're using heuristics on the actual browsing behavior to generate advertising metrics for sell to advertisers/vendors/affiliates or something like that, and the bots throw off the accuracy of the metrics and that discovery by a 3rd party they've got a contract with has just lost them a bunch of money behind the scenes.

  • Don't want to mess up their scams (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Revek ( 133289 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:08PM (#65773156)
    I've watched several items in my saved items list creep steadily up in the last two months. Most everyone here knows what comes next. When the after thanksgiving stupidity hits the items will go 'on sale' at a slightly higher price than they were a few months before. Having a AI agent mixed in that isn't in on the scam would interfere with their scam.

  • Amazon has it wrong (Score:3)

    by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:13PM (#65773174)

    First, I think Comet is a stupid, brain-smoothing security risk.

    Second, trying to tell me the customer I can't use Perplexity to shop is like saying I can't use Safari or Chrome or whatever. Sure you could put technical roadblocks in place to prevent it, but it's stupid for Amazon to try and enforce this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by easyTree ( 1042254 )

      They're not trying to tell you that you the customer can't have an agent act on your behalf, they're saying:

      we can't cross-sell you a bunch of useless shit you don't actually want because perplexity are allowing your will to be expressed in the most direct manner and not giving our psychologists a stab at your attention - which is obviously 'not good'

  • Did perplexity actually commit fraud? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:16PM (#65773188)

    Or did the person use it to commit fraud?
    Or did perplexity simply find good products at good prices while ignoring ads or suggested products?
    I don't trust current AI agents to make purchase decisions for me, but I suspect that future AI agents, acting in the customers' interests, will result in better deals for customers

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      If the vendor committed the fraud, that's very bad news for everyone providing software. Your GitHub profile may be a liability, if a user can use your programs to do something illegal and a court rules that the creator of the software is responsible.

  • **The document also said Perplexity's tool degraded the Amazon shopping experience and introduced privacy vulnerabilities....** I think that comment is hilarious. Customers privacy and Amazon just don't add up.

    • Its like the advertising industry's insistence that shoving ads in your face is too your benefit because otherwise you would not know about the great opportunities to buy that they show you, and that any effort to filter out these ads is to your detriment.

  • The comments... Wow. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bloggerhater ( 2439270 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:27PM (#65773232)

    As the kids would say... tell me you don't know about scalpers automating purchases on Amazon without telling me you don't know about scalpers automating purchases on Amazon.

  • \o/ (Score:2, Interesting)

    by easyTree ( 1042254 )

    a looming debate over how to handle the proliferation of so-called AI agents

    Pretty sure this has already been solved in the US - check who has the most money - they get to decide for everyone - nice and simple - no long-winded investigations into morality, side-effects, greater good - just a nice, simple comparison of floating point numbers. So efficient. What's the emoji for ironic envy?

  • Amazon is terrified... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ForkInMe ( 6978200 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @02:56PM (#65773290)
    I think Amazon sees that a good shopping agent doesn't need to go to 3 or 4 big sites looking for good prices - they can go to hundreds or thousands of sites and find the best deal - no need for 3rd party resellers to give a cut to Amazon in that situation, just have a site listing your items and terms in a way that makes it easy for an "AI" agent to browse and forget selling through Amazon.

  • Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)

    by allo ( 1728082 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @04:01PM (#65773448)

    I think it is a bad idea to let an AI shop in a (semi-)automated way, but if Amazon can disallow users to use certain programs to access their site, they (and other sites) can also start making rules about adblockers, supported browsers in general and other details about what software may be used with their site.

  • eBay is Cheaper (Score:4, Informative)

    by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Tuesday November 04, 2025 @04:32PM (#65773554)

    Since cancelling Amazon Prime a few years ago, I have been comparison shopping on eBay.
    I almost always find that eBay is cheaper with free shipping and free returns on most items.
    Nice to stop paying the Amazon tax.

  • It is weird that the article does not mention Bezos given that he is the biggest name associated with both entities.

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