A U.S. appeals court sided with Perplexity in its dispute with Amazon over the AI agent Comet.
A U.S. federal appeals court has overturned a preliminary injunction that blocked the use of Perplexity's AI agent Comet to automate purchases on Amazon. This ruling marks an important precedent in the legal regulation of interactions between autonomous algorithms and commercial web platforms.
The court's key argument: actions taken through Comet are initiated and controlled by the end user, not by Perplexity itself. The AI agent serves merely as a tool executing human commands, which relieves the developer of direct responsibility for bypassing Amazon's technical restrictions. The court found there were insufficient grounds to maintain the injunction, especially at this early stage of the proceedings.
This is the first federal appeals-level ruling that directly addresses the legal status of AI agents in the context of access to web services. Previously, similar disputes more often involved ordinary bots and scrapers, but here we are dealing with a more complex architecture where the algorithm acts on behalf of the user in real time.
It is important to understand that the lifting of the injunction is not the final point. Amazon's underlying lawsuit against Perplexity remains in effect, and the court will need to examine in detail issues of fair use, terms of service, and potential harm to infrastructure. However, the current ruling sets a direction: courts are not yet ready to equate the actions of an AI agent with the direct actions of the developer.
For the market, this is a signal that innovations in AI commerce are receiving a certain degree of legal protection, but platforms such as Amazon will strengthen technical barriers and legal language. In the short term, Perplexity may continue developing Comet, but the long-term sustainability of such services will depend on the outcome of the underlying litigation and potential legislative changes.
My comment: This ruling is merely a temporary reprieve for Perplexity. The court made it clear that the question of abuse of automated access remains open, and I expect Amazon to revise its terms and technical safeguards to close this loophole. In any case, we are witnessing the formation of a new legal norm that will define the boundaries of AI agent use in e-commerce.