Amazon and Perplexity are beefing over AI shopping

• Perplexity says Amazon is “bullying” it over the agentic AI web browser Comet and its access to Amazon’s storefront.
• Amazon sent “an aggressive legal threat,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
• An Amazon spokesperson said AI tools that make purchases on other platforms should “respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate.”

A tech titan and a buzzy AI startup are fighting over exactly how much purchasing power an AI agent should have.

Perplexity, an $18 billion AI startup that makes the buzzy AI web browser Comet, published a blog post on Tuesday saying that it had received a legal threat from Amazon.

“This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon. This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet users,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post titled “Bullying is Not Innovation.”

“Amazon wants to block you from using your own AI assistant to shop on their platform,” the AI startup wrote.

“Amazon should love this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn’t care. They’re more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers,” the company added.

It’s the latest legal salvo launched against Perplexity and its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, who leads one of the highest-valued AI startups to emerge during the AI boom. While Perplexity’s AI search products have proven popular, they’ve also led to legal challenges over the startup’s data access and training practices.

Shares of Amazon were trading down around 1.7% as of 2:19 p.m. in New York.

Amazon posted a statement on its website Tuesday about the matter.

“We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate,” Amazon said.

“This helps ensure a positive customer experience and it is how others operate, including food delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for, delivery service apps and the stores they shop from, and online travel agencies and the airlines they book tickets with for customers,” the statement continued. “Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”

Last month, Reddit sued Perplexity and other companies it called “data scrapers,” accusing them of stealing data from the social media platform. The suit said that Perplexity’s citations of Reddit increased “forty-fold” after the social media platform told Perplexity to stop accessing its data.

Perplexity has also faced suits from Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster, as well as News Corp.’s New York Post and Dow Jones, which filed a complaint alleging copyright infringement. Last year, The New York Times sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity, according to reports.

A spokesperson for Perplexity previously told Business Insider that the AI startup “will always fight vigorously for users’ rights to freely and fairly access public knowledge.”