Amazon boots Perplexity AI’s shopping bot for breaking rules

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Amazon has officially told Perplexity AI to take its shopping bot and kindly exit the world’s biggest digital mall. 

The drama, because of course there’s drama, went public on Tuesday after both companies confirmed that Amazon had kicked Perplexity’s “Comet” shopping agent off its platform for breaking the rules.

The e-commerce giant says it repeatedly warned Perplexity that its bot wasn’t identifying itself as, well, a bot. 

Perplexity’s response? A blog post titled: “Bullying is not innovation.”

According to Perplexity, Amazon fired off a “legal threat” demanding the company stop letting users’ AI assistants roam the site. 

Perplexity framed it like the opening shot in a broader war: “This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet users.” 

It basically said: We’d like to paint ourselves as the scrappy underdog here.

Perplexity’s main defense is basically: “The bot is just doing what a human told it to, so it should count as a human.” 

Amazon, however, says nice try. Other third-party services, think DoorDash drivers ordering Chipotle on your behalf, identify themselves, and Comet should too. 

In Amazon’s view, the fix is simple: say you’re a bot, follow the rules, continue shopping. But there’s an elephant in the warehouse: Amazon has its own AI shopping assistant, Rufus. 

So even if Comet follows the rules, Amazon could still block it. (Nothing personal, just capitalism.)

Perplexity claims Amazon’s real motive is protecting ad dollars and impulse buys. 

A bot won’t get distracted by a “Customers also bought…” trap and emerge with three scented candles and a limited-edition waffle maker.

If this all sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Perplexity was also accused by Cloudflare earlier this year of sneaky web scraping. 

Back then, Perplexity stans defended it as just “browsing like a human.” 

The problem: it was browsing like a human wearing a fake mustache and sunglasses.

Whether Amazon is guarding its turf or setting policy for the AI-powered future, one thing is clear: if bots really are the next generation of shoppers, the internet’s biggest storefront just put up a giant “No hoodies, no masks, no anonymous robots” sign.