Perplexity AI shopping agent accused of violating Amazon terms of service
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Occurred: August 2025
Page published: October 2025
Perplexity’s AI-powered shopping agent allegedly scraped and used Amazon product data in ways that violated the platform’s Terms of Service, raising concerns about competitive misuse, data rights, and opaque AI behaviours.
What happened
What happened
Perplexity AI launched an automated shopping assistant designed to fetch product details, compare prices, and generate purchase recommendations across major e-commerce sites.
Reports emerged that the agent was repeatedly querying Amazon’s product pages at high volume, extracting listings, reviews, pricing information, and seller metadata without using Amazon’s authorised API and without permission.
The behaviour allegedly occurred shortly after the agent’s rollout in late 2025 and was traced back to Perplexity-managed IP ranges. Amazon accused the company of violating its Terms of Service, which forbid automated scraping and resale or reuse of structured product data.
Potential harms include unfair competitive advantage, the degradation of Amazon’s service performance due to excessive automated traffic, the misrepresentation or outdated reproduction of Amazon’s listings within Perplexity’s interface, and the undermining of sellers whose products were surfaced or contextualised in ways they could not control.
Why it happened
Why it happened
The controversy centers around whether autonomous agents acting on user command must disclose themselves and uphold platform-specific transparency rules.
Perplexity believed its AI agent operates as a user proxy, using local data only, while Amazon demanded unambiguous agent identification to preserve security, trust, and an accountable, open ecosystem.
Previously, Perplexity had agreed to pause such agentic behaviour after initial warnings, but reportedly resumed the disputed practices in mid-2025 with new technical workarounds.
The lack of established norms and legal clarity around agentic access to online platforms, especially for purchasing, data, and automation, allowed for divergent expectations regarding transparency and accountability.
What it means
What it means
This legal and ethical clash has serious implications for consumers, digital commerce, and society at large.
Directly impacted users face potential risks to privacy, order accuracy, and the reliability of Amazon’s services, while indirectly, the incident marks an early test of how platforms and AI agents will coexist in the emerging era of autonomous internet tools.
For society, the case raises urgent questions about competition, innovation, and user rights, as giants like Amazon seek to set boundaries for a new generation of agentic applications. How courts, regulators, and tech leaders resolve such disputes will shape the rules, risks, and freedoms of future online commerce for everyone.
Agentic AI
Agentic AI is a class of artificial intelligence that focuses on autonomous systems that can make decisions and perform tasks without human intervention.
Source: Wikipedia🔗
Developer: Perplexity AI
Country: USA
Sector: Retail
Purpose: Automate Amazon online shopping
Technology: Agentic AI; Machine learning
Issue: Acountability; Autonomy; Competition/monopolisation; Privacy; Representation; Transparency
News, commentary, analysis 🗞️
News, commentary, analysis 🗞️
https://www.techspot.com/news/110138-amazon-warns-perplexity-cease-desist-over-ai-shopping.html
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/perplexity-receives-legal-threat-amazon-over-agentic-ai-shopping-tool-2025-11-04/
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/04/amazon-sends-legal-threats-to-perplexity-over-agentic-browsing/
AIAAIC Repository ID: AIAAIC2117
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