Amazon accused AI-generated company Perplexity of violating its terms in online shopping by disguising bots as real human shoppers, reports claimed.
Perplexity, a budding AI startup, faces the wrath of a multi-billion-dollar tech titan over how much purchasing power AI agents should have.
Perplexity Faces Giant Adversary
The startup wrote about Amazon‘s case in a blog post titled ‘Bullying is Not Innovation.’
‘This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon,’ the startup stated. ‘This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet users.
The AI-centred company also mentioned that Amazon aims to block users from using their own AI assistant for shopping on the platform.
‘Amazon’s claims are typical legal bluster and completely unfounded,’ a Perplexity spokesperson told Decrypt. ‘What if stores said you can only hire a personal shopper who works for the store? That’s not a personal shopper, it’s a sales associate.’
The article also mentioned that Amazon should actually appreciate the innovation brought by AI since it produces an easier shopping experience.
‘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,’ Perplexity stated.
Amazon’s Argument
In a report from Bloomberg, the influential e-commerce site accused the tech startup that the agents of Perplexity ‘degraded the Amazon shopping experience,’ Amazon said.
The e-commerce giant also claimed that AI-powered third-party agents should operate transparently and with coordination with participating shops.
‘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 wrote on its website. ‘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.’
However, the leading e-commerce site claimed that they are still open to agentic experiences that uplift customer value and work transparently.
Perplexity’s Legal Issues
Amazon’s case against Perplexity is the latest legal battle that the startup and its CEO, Aravind Srinivas, is facing at the moment.
The first criticism came from Forbes in June 2024, when the publication called out Perplexity for using their content without proper citations.
Srinivas claimed that the feature contains several ‘rough edges’ and accepted criticisms, yet mentioned that they only aggregate the content instead of plagiarizing it.
The New York Times also sent a cease-and-desist order against the AI company for accessing and using its content and violating its copyright.
Even Japanese publications, The Nikkei and The Asahi Shimbun, sued the AI startup for alleged copyright infringement.
Most recently, Reddit filed a lawsuit in October against Perplexity due to unlawful data scraping.
Perplexity continues to operate using their artificial intelligence technology despite all the legal challenges coming its way over the years.
