Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer of Perplexity AI Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 5, 2025.
Perplexity AI accused Amazon of "bullying" on Tuesday after it received a letter from the e-commerce giant demanding it prevent people from using its artificial intelligence browser Comet to make purchases on their behalf.
In a blog post, Perplexity said users can ask its Comet Assistant to find items and make purchases on Amazon, and that they "love this experience." But Perplexity said it received "an aggressive legal threat" from Amazon "demanding" that it put a stop to that practice.
Amazon has already taken steps in recent months to prevent external AI agents from crawling its website, including those developed by OpenAI, Google and Meta .
"Amazon should love this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn't care," Perplexity wrote. "They're more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers."
Amazon said in a blog post that third-party shopping agents should operate openly and "respect service provider decisions" on whether or not to participate.
The company said Perplexity wasn't operating transparently and is evading the company to gain unauthorized access to its store.
It also argued that Perplexity's agents degrade the Amazon shopping experience by showing products that don't broaden discovery, lack personalized recommendations and may not be the fastest delivery speed available to shoppers.