US Appeals Court Allows Perplexity's AI Shopping Agents Back on Amazon

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco lifted a preliminary injunction that prohibited Perplexity from deploying its agentic AI shopping tools on Amazon's platform. The court concluded that Amazon's claim that Perplexity's AI agents violated a federal computer crime law would likely not hold up, because it was the users who accessed Amazon with the help of the agents, not Perplexity itself. This is the first ruling by a US federal appeals court on whether AI agents can lawfully access online platforms on behalf of users, and it has broad implications for agentic systems that plan, reason, and execute tasks with limited human oversight. Amazon had filed a lawsuit in November, accusing Perplexity of covertly accessing private customer accounts via its Comet browser and AI agent, which can log into shopping accounts and place orders, creating security risks. In March, a California federal court had granted Amazon a temporary injunction, but that has now been overturned. Amazon stated it disagrees with the decision and is reviewing next steps. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas had previously called the lawsuit bullying and argued that authorized agents should have the same rights as human users. Notably, Perplexity is an AWS customer with commitments in the hundreds of millions, and Jeff Bezos is among its investors.