• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Amazon has sent a cease-and-desist letter in a dispute with Perplexity over the company’s AI agent that runs on the Comet browser.

The marketplace claims Perplexity's agent is making unauthorized purchases on its platform and violating its terms of service.

Unlike other third-party agents, Amazon argues, Perplexity's agent does not identify itself when making a purchase, which seems to be the major point of contention. 

"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 in a blog post describing the order. 

Amazon also posted a copy of the four-page cease-and-desist order. It states that the company has "repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience."

Perplexity, which called Amazon's “aggressive” actions "bullying," said in a blog post that its AI agent acts with permission on behalf of a human user. The startup argues that Amazon's decision has been driven by a desire to protect its advertising revenue and control how consumers make purchasing decisions.

In the letter to users, Perplexity wrote: “Amazon wants to block you from using your own AI assistant to shop on their platform” after asking the Comet Assistant to find and purchase something on Amazon.

When consumers are logged in to Amazon, the Comet Assistant can find and purchase the item on behalf of the consumer. Users also can ask it to compare options and purchase the best one for specific needs.

CEO Andy Jassy told investors recently during the company’s earnings call that the disruption in technology and partnerships reminds him of search engine years ago and how each became a source of discovery for commerce.

"You had to figure out the right way to work together," Jassy said. "Today search engines are a very small part of referral traffic, and third-party agents are a small subset of that.”

Later, Jassy said that Amazon is having “conversations with and expect over time to partner with third-party agents.”

But the statement on Perplexity’s website accuses Amazon of being more interested in serving ads, sponsored results and influencing purchase decisions to upsell products and confuse offers than working with third-party AI agent partners.

Amazon is also developing AI shopping assistants and is concerned about Perplexity bypassing its system.