U.S. appeals court rules Amazon unlikely to prove Perplexity violated federal hacking law in AI agent shopping case, setting precedent for autonomous agent authority.
AI & Agents ·
A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a preliminary injunction that had temporarily blocked Perplexity's AI shopping tool from accessing Amazon, finding the company unlikely to have violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that under federal law, users rather than Perplexity were the ones accessing Amazon's platform when interacting through the startup's agentic AI browser Comet, which can browse websites and execute purchases on a user's behalf. To succeed under the CFAA, a plaintiff must demonstrate intentional unauthorized access and losses of at least $5,000 over a one-year period, a standard the court found Amazon unlikely to meet.
The dispute traces to November, when Amazon issued a cease-and-desist and subsequently sued, claiming Comet disguised automated traffic as a standard browser and accessed password-protected customer accounts without authorization. Amazon also alleged the tool breached its terms of service. Perplexity countered that Comet operates only with explicit user permission, drawing credentials from users' own devices, and characterized Amazon's action as an attempt to suppress AI assistant competition.
The appellate decision does not resolve the underlying lawsuit, which remains active. Nonetheless, the ruling provides early judicial guidance on how courts may evaluate whether autonomous agents acting on user instruction constitute unauthorized computer access under existing federal law.