Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer of Perplexity AI Inc., during the Bloomberg Tech conference in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 5, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Perplexity AI accused Amazon of "bullying" on Tuesday after it received a letter from the e-commerce giant demanding it prevent people from using its artificial intelligence browser Comet to make purchases on their behalf.
In a blog post, Perplexity said users can ask its Comet Assistant to find items and make purchases on Amazon, and that they "love this experience." But Perplexity said it received "an aggressive legal threat" from Amazon "demanding" that it put a stop to that practice.
Amazon has already taken steps in recent months to prevent external AI agents from crawling its website, including those developed by OpenAI, Google and Meta.
"Amazon should love this. Easier shopping means more transactions and happier customers. But Amazon doesn't care," Perplexity wrote. "They're more interested in serving you ads, sponsored results, and influencing your purchasing decisions with upsells and confusing offers."
Amazon did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.
At the same time that Amazon is seeking to keep AI tools off its site, the company has launched its own offerings.
Last February, it rolled out a shopping chatbot called Rufus that can answer questions and suggest products. Amazon also began testing an agent in April called "Buy For Me" that lets shoppers purchase some products from other websites without leaving its app.
Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. The company initially launched Comet in July, and it rolled out for free worldwide in October.
Comet is supposed to serve as a personal assistant that can search the web, organize tabs, shop, draft emails and more, Perplexity said.
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