Amazon’s move against Comet reveals a deeper threat to AI purchases

The showdown between Amazon and Perplexity marks a turning point for AI-driven commerce. By obtaining a judicial block on Comet, the American giant is not only targeting the automated shopping agent, but is defending its control over access to its platform and its users’ data. Behind this decision made in San Francisco, a larger question arises: how far can AI agents act on behalf of internet users without interfering with the sovereignty of the main platforms?

Amazon gets first stop against Comet

Amazon has scored its first court victory against Perplexity in a case directly related to the rise of agency business, while the firm has just strengthened its AI ties. Indeed, federal judge Maxine Chesney issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Comet browser from making purchases on Amazon on behalf of users at this stage.

The decision does not yet resolve the merits of the dispute, but it already establishes a key point. For the court, the authorization granted by the user to the AI ​​agent does not automatically mean the authorization granted by the platform itself.

This sequence fits into a longer confrontation between the two groups. Amazon says it issued several warnings before resorting to court, and says Perplexity continued to operate despite technical blocking measures. So the immediate problem is not just a commercial one. It also applies to the platform’s ability to control automated access to its services, especially when they go through protected customer accounts.

• Federal Judge Maxine Chesney granted a preliminary injunction against Perplexity, an interim measure, not a final judgment;

• According to the decision, Amazon submitted the evidence described “generally undisputed evidence” support that Perplexity accessed password-protected Prime accounts with a user agreement, but without Amazon’s permission;

• Amazon claims to have asked Perplexity to stop at least five times since November 2024;

• After the technical block was implemented in August 2025, Perplexity reportedly deployed an update within 24 hours to bypass the bottleneck;

• The order requires Perplexity to end that access and destroy copies of Amazon customer data collected through Comet. His enforcement was suspended for seven days to allow for an appeal.

A case that reveals the fragility of agency business

The broader interpretation of the case is broader. It refers to space platforms that are willing to provide agents able to shop, navigate and make decisions on behalf of the client. Perplexity based its defense on user rights.

The company says it wants to “Continue to defend the right of internet users to choose the AI ​​they want to use”. In a blog post published in November using data from the chain, he had already characterized Amazon’s offensive as intimidation, arguing that agency business could generate more transactions for the Seattle giant.

This position resonates with an earlier statement by Andy Jassy, ​​Amazon’s CEO, who said that agency business “could be very beneficial for e-commerce”while, according to him, it is still insufficiently reliable in the area of ​​personalization and pricing. Amazon doesn’t dispute the very idea of ​​AI-driven commerce, but it does object to a third party putting itself between its marketplace and its users without the green light.

Another aspect of the case concerns the safety and economics of the model. Amazon relied on work from Brave published on October 21, 2025, which showed that Comet had rapid injection vulnerabilities via screenshots and malicious web content.

Brave writes that these attacks show that traditional web security assumptions “no longer holds when AI agents act on behalf of users” and that this type of assistant can be manipulated by untrusted content running with authenticated user rights.

At the same time, Amazon is also defending a massive economic stake. The group generated advertising revenue of $68.6 billion in 2025, and the agent, who skips directly from the payment inquiry, will delete the sponsored spots that structure part of the monetization of the platform. Industry context adds another layer. On November 3, 2025, AWS and OpenAI announced a $38 billion multi-year strategic partnership with targeted capacity deployment by the end of 2026.

In addition to the failure caused by Perplexity, the rise of AI agents will collide with the red lines set by the platforms. It remains to be seen whether this framework will further tighten with new regulatory or policy initiatives such as the Ordinance “Genesis Mission”now watched as a possible signal of acceleration.

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