Perplexity: Amazon's 'Bullying Tactics' Won't Stop Comet

Amazon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Perplexity in October 2025, alleging computer fraud and a lack of transparency in how the agent operates. Following the preliminary injunction granted in March 2026, an Amazon spokesperson stated: "The preliminary injunction will prevent Perplexity's unauthorised access to the Amazon store and is an important step in maintaining a trusted shopping experience for Amazon customers."

Perplexity has rejected that framing entirely. The company argues that Amazon's real motivation is commercial self-interest, not consumer protection. "Amazon should love this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn't care. They're more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers," Perplexity said in its public response to the legal action.

Amazon has simultaneously been blocking AI crawlers from OpenAI, Google, and Meta, whilst developing its own AI tools including the Rufus shopping chatbot and an experimental "Buy For Me" feature. The company is not opposed to AI; it is opposed to AI it does not control.

Why This Matters for Europe

European observers should resist the temptation to treat this as purely an American technology spat. The structural questions it raises sit squarely within the scope of EU digital regulation, and Brussels has already assembled the legislative tools to engage with them.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA), which designates major platforms as "gatekeepers" and imposes interoperability and fair-access obligations, is directly relevant. Amazon is a designated DMA gatekeeper. If an equivalent dispute were to arise in the EU, Perplexity could plausibly argue that Amazon's blocking of third-party AI agents constitutes an abuse of gatekeeper status, particularly if it can demonstrate that Amazon's own competing AI tools receive preferential treatment on the same platform.

Margrethe Vestager, former European Commission Executive Vice President for Competition, consistently argued during her tenure that platform self-preferencing represents one of the most corrosive threats to digital competition. Her successor, Teresa Ribera, has signalled she intends to maintain that line. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has also been vocal about the right of consumers to use third-party tools when navigating digital marketplaces, framing it as a matter of consumer sovereignty rather than simply a competition question.

Separately, Mistral AI, the Paris-based large language model company and one of Europe's most prominent AI champions, has built its commercial proposition on the premise that open, interoperable AI infrastructure benefits the broader ecosystem. Its co-founder Arthur Mensch has argued repeatedly that walled-garden approaches by dominant platforms stifle the kind of innovation that produces genuine consumer value. The Perplexity-Amazon confrontation is a live stress test of exactly that thesis.

The Competitive Landscape

Shopping agents are not a niche experiment. ChatGPT introduced a "Buy It" button in October 2024. Google's AI-powered shopping search continues to evolve. Perplexity's Comet, despite the injunction, continues to function on all platforms except Amazon, and the company has expanded it to Android devices.

The table below summarises the current state of major AI shopping features and their relationship with Amazon's ecosystem:

• Perplexity Comet: Direct purchase agent, launched July 2025, blocked on Amazon via US court injunction
• Amazon Rufus: Internal shopping chatbot, launched February 2025, native integration only
• ChatGPT Shopping: "Buy It" button, launched October 2024, limited third-party partnership
• Google Shopping: AI-powered search, ongoing updates, operates via product listings

The pattern is clear: every major AI player is moving into transactional commerce, and every major platform is attempting to manage how that access is structured. The Perplexity case is simply the first to reach a courtroom.

What Comes Next

The immediate practical impact for consumers is limited in scope: Comet cannot complete Amazon purchases in the United States. Perplexity continues to develop its broader assistant capabilities and has shown no intention of withdrawing the product. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has acknowledged that partnerships with AI agents are not out of the question, though any arrangement would almost certainly require Amazon to retain significant control over how agents access its storefront.

Several questions will define how this dispute evolves, particularly in the European context:

• Whether the European Commission will treat AI agent blocking as a DMA compliance issue for designated gatekeepers
• Whether consumer protection bodies will frame third-party AI access as a right of end-users rather than a privilege granted by platforms
• What revenue models emerge for AI shopping agents if traditional advertising bypass becomes technically and legally normalised
• How Amazon's EU operations respond if the US precedent proves difficult to replicate under European competition law

The US preliminary injunction favours Amazon for now. But preliminary injunctions are, by definition, not final. Perplexity's argument that Comet delivers measurable consumer benefit is not legally decisive in a US computer fraud context, but it is exactly the kind of argument that carries weight before the European Commission and before national competition authorities in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, all of which have shown willingness to act independently of Brussels when platforms overstep.

The next chapter of this dispute will be written in courtrooms and regulatory offices on both sides of the Atlantic. European stakeholders should be reading every page.