Amazon bans Perplexity Comet "automatic shopping" court-approved injunction! AI proxy war begins

U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney issued a temporary restraining order on March 10, prohibiting Perplexity AI’s Comet browser proxy from accessing Amazon’s website, scraping customer shopping data, and requiring the destruction of any obtained data.
(Background: Perplexity AI’s browser “Comet” is free to use: summarizing content, autonomous navigation, Gmail integration)
(Additional context: What AI tools does Jensen Huang love to use? Perplexity AI is well-known)

Perplexity’s Comet browser allows AI agents to help users find products and place orders on shopping sites automatically, without user intervention, but Amazon is furious!

In November 2025, Amazon filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court, accusing Perplexity of concealing the AI proxy identity, unauthorized access to password-protected accounts, and disrupting billing in the advertising system. On March 10, Judge Maxine Chesney ruled that Amazon “is likely to succeed on the merits” and immediately issued a temporary restraining order.

Amazon’s Three Main Allegations

Court documents show Amazon raised three levels of accusations, all supported by strong evidence.

First, the AI poses security threats. Comet’s proxy isn’t just crawling public pages; it can access password-protected Amazon Prime private accounts and perform actions on behalf of users. The court believes this directly endangers customer data, surpassing typical crawling behavior.

Second, the advertising system is compromised. Traffic generated by the AI proxy is counted as ad impressions, but these “views” never convert into actual consumer actions, leading to distorted ad billing data.

Third, deliberate evasion. In August 2025, Amazon deployed webpage settings to block AI access, but Perplexity released an update within 24 hours that bypassed these restrictions. The court views this as a significant sign of “deliberate conduct” by Perplexity.

Perplexity: Bullying by Big Tech

Perplexity strongly opposes the restraining order, calling Amazon’s legal actions a “bullying tactic.” Perplexity states that users have the fundamental right to choose any AI assistant for online shopping, and Amazon’s lawsuit is essentially using legal means to protect its monopoly over the shopping ecosystem.

After the order was issued, Perplexity announced it will apply for a stay in the Ninth Circuit Court within 7 days and appeal the ruling. This legal battle is far from over.

This case has already sparked an AI proxy war, far beyond a commercial dispute between Amazon and Perplexity. AI proxies are evolving into “task-performing agents,” allowing AI to access computer interfaces that were once only operable by humans, which will surely disrupt the data accuracy of large retailers’ big data.