Amazon has instructed Perplexity to remove Agent Browser from its online store, the companies publicly confirmed on Tuesday. After warning Perplexity multiple times that its AI-powered shopping assistant Comet was violating Amazon's terms of service by not disclosing its agent status, the e-commerce giant sent the AI search engine startup a sharply worded cease and desist letter, Perplexity wrote in a blog post titled “Bullying Is Not Innovation.”
“This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon demanding that Comet users be banned from using its AI assistant on Amazon. This is Amazon's first legal salvo against an AI company and a threat to all internet users,” Perplexity lamented in a blog post.
Perplexity's claim is that because its agents act on behalf of human users' instructions, they automatically have “the same privileges” as human users. This means that you do not need to identify yourself as an agent.
Amazon's response points out that other third-party agents operating at the direction of human users reveal their identity. “The same goes for how other companies operate, including food delivery apps and restaurants where you take orders, delivery service apps and the stores you shop at, online travel agents and airlines that book tickets for your customers, and more,” Amazon's statement said.
If Amazon is to be believed, Perplexity may just identify its distributors and start shopping. Of course, there is a risk that Amazon, which has its own shopping bot called Rufus, could block Comet (or other third-party agency shoppers) from its site.
Amazon's statement is as suggestive as it says: “We believe it is very easy for third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of other businesses' customers to operate openly and respect the service provider's decision whether or not to participate.”
Perplexity claims that Amazon blocks shopping bots because Amazon wants to sell advertising and product referrals. Unlike a human shopper, a bot tasked with buying a new laundry basket probably won't buy a more expensive basket or be tempted to buy Brandon Sanderson's latest novel or a new set of earphones (on sale!).
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If all of this sounds a little familiar, that's because it is. A few months ago, Cloudflare released an investigation accusing Perplexity of scraping websites while specifically defying requests from websites to block AI bots. Interestingly, many people defended Perplexity at this time. This is because this was not a clear-cut case of web crawler misbehavior. Cloudflare documented how its AI accessed certain public websites when users asked questions about them. Perplexity fans argued that this is exactly what all human-operated web browsers do.
Perplexity, on the other hand, used some questionable methods, including hiding their identity, to gain access if the website opted out of the bot.
As TechCrunch reported at the time, this was a harbinger of what would happen if the world of agents materialized as Silicon Valley predicted. When consumers and businesses trust bots to do their shopping, travel bookings, and restaurant reservations, is it in a website's best interest to block them completely? How do they allow and cooperate with them?
Amazon may be right to be perplexed in that it is setting a precedent. As the 800-pound gorilla of the e-commerce industry, I've clearly stated that the way this should work is for agents to identify themselves and leave decisions up to the website.