A US federal appeals court has overturned the injunction that blocked Perplexity from running its agentic AI shopping tools on Amazon, handing the AI search startup a landmark win and establishing the first appellate-level precedent on whether AI agents can lawfully act on behalf of users online. The decision is a defining moment for the fast-growing field of agentic AI, and it is being closely tracked across breaking AI policy coverage.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on its claim that Perplexity's AI agents violated a federal computer fraud law, Reuters reported. The court concluded that the deciding factor was one of attribution: it was the users who accessed Amazon's platform through the agents, not Perplexity itself.
What the Appeals Court Decided
The federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) prohibits accessing a computer and obtaining information without authorization. Amazon had argued that Perplexity's agents logged into shopper accounts and placed orders without Amazon's permission, effectively trespassing on its platform.
The three-judge panel disagreed with that framing. According to the ruling, because users directed the agents and supplied their own credentials, the access was attributable to the users — who were authorized — rather than to Perplexity as an unauthorized third party. The March lower-court injunction that had temporarily barred the tools and ordered Perplexity to delete copies of Amazon data is now void, although the underlying case has not yet been decided on its merits.
The ruling is the first by a US federal appeals court to address whether AI agents can lawfully access online platforms on a user's behalf, and it arrives as agentic systems — software that can plan, reason, browse, and complete transactions with limited human oversight — move from demos into mainstream products.
Amazon Vows to Keep Fighting
Amazon signaled it will not accept the loss. "We respectfully disagree with today's decision on the preliminary injunction," a company spokesperson said, adding that Amazon "remain[s] confident in our case and is evaluating next steps."
Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer struck a defiant tone. "Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want," he said.
The Backstory: Comet and the November Lawsuit
Amazon sued Perplexity in November, accusing the startup of covertly accessing private Amazon customer accounts through its Comet browser and the AI agent built into it. That agent can log into a shopper's account and complete purchases on their behalf. Amazon's complaint alleged security risks and claimed Perplexity had ignored repeated demands to stop.
In March, Judge Maxine Chesney of the federal court in California granted Amazon a preliminary injunction, finding "strong evidence" that Perplexity had accessed password-protected accounts with the users' permission but without Amazon's authorization.
Perplexity has consistently called the lawsuit baseless. It framed Amazon's challenge as, in its words, a "bald attempt" to steer customers away from Comet — arguing that AI agents "don't have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with."
A Collision Over Who Controls the Shopping Experience
Beyond the legal technicalities, the dispute is a fight over control of the online shopping interface. Amazon pointed to its own tools, including a "Buy For Me" feature and the "Rufus" shopping assistant, arguing that third-party AI must operate transparently and respect established platform APIs rather than navigating sites the way a human would.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas called Amazon's position "bullying" and argued that agents acting on behalf of users should enjoy the same rights as the human users themselves — including the right to skip parts of a website a human could choose to ignore.
Complicated Business Ties
The litigation sits awkwardly atop substantial commercial relationships between the two companies. Perplexity is an Amazon Web Services customer with commitments reported in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is among Perplexity's investors through his venture investments. Those overlapping interests underscore how intertwined the AI ecosystem has become, even as its leading players sue one another.
Why It Matters for Agentic AI
Legal analysts say the appeals court's attribution reasoning could reshape how platforms police automated agents. If access is deemed to flow from the user, platforms may have limited recourse under anti-hacking statutes against agents their customers choose to deploy — shifting the battleground toward contract terms, terms of service, and forthcoming AI-specific regulation.
The case also foreshadows a wave of similar disputes. As AI agents increasingly browse, shop, book, and transact across the web on behalf of consumers, the question of who is "accessing" a service — the person, the agent, or the company that built it — will recur across nearly every consumer platform.
The underlying lawsuit between Amazon and Perplexity continues, and a final merits ruling could still go either way. For now, though, the appellate decision clears the way for Perplexity's AI shopping tools to operate on Amazon while the broader fight plays out.
