On March 10, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an injunction against Amazon, restricting the AI browser proxy Comet used by the AI startup Perplexity to perform shopping tasks on Amazon's platform. This ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Amazon last November, accusing Perplexity of not disclosing its proxy identity when shopping on behalf of real users and continuing to violate platform rules after being asked to stop.
Judge Maxine Chesney stated in her ruling that Amazon provided strong evidence showing that Perplexity accessed password-protected accounts without authorization. According to the court's requirements, Perplexity must delete all illegally collected Amazon data and has a one-week period to appeal.
This case is not just a legal dispute but also highlights the ethical and technical boundary challenges faced by AI agents when performing complex commercial tasks. Currently, OpenAI considers product research and online shopping as key features of its chat functions, although it has not yet implemented direct checkout functionality.
Notably, Amazon has recently become a major investor in OpenAI, a move seen as part of Amazon's strategy to regulate external AI behavior while trying to control the AI e-commerce entry point. As the legal definition of AI automation becomes clearer, the penetration of AI agents in the e-commerce sector will face stricter compliance reviews in the future.
