According to Business Insider, Amazon sent a legal threat this week to $18 billion AI startup Perplexity over its Comet AI browser making purchases on Amazon’s platform. Perplexity published a blog post on Tuesday titled “Bullying is Not Innovation” calling Amazon’s demand “aggressive” and claiming it represents “Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company.” Amazon responded with its own statement, arguing that third-party applications making purchases “should respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate” and that Comet provides a “significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience.” The dispute centers on whether AI assistants should be allowed to shop directly on Amazon, with Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas leading the charge against what he sees as anti-competitive behavior.
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<h2 id="business-model-clash”>The Business Model Clash
Here’s the thing – this isn’t really about shopping experience quality. It’s about control. Amazon built an empire on being the everything store, but they also built an advertising business that’s absolutely massive. When AI agents like Comet can bypass Amazon’s carefully crafted shopping journey, they’re potentially bypassing all those sponsored results, upsells, and data collection points that make Amazon’s model so profitable.
Think about it. Amazon says Comet provides a “degraded experience,” but degraded for whom? For customers who get what they want faster? Or for Amazon’s bottom line? Perplexity’s argument that “easier shopping means more transactions” makes intuitive sense, but Amazon knows something about shopping psychology that AI startups might be missing. Impulse buys, cross-selling, and those “customers who bought this also bought” recommendations account for huge revenue.
The Precedent Problem
Amazon’s comparison to food delivery apps and online travel agencies is actually pretty clever. They’re saying “look, even DoorDash doesn’t force restaurants to participate if they don’t want to.” But there’s a key difference here. When you use a food delivery app, you’re still interacting with the restaurant’s menu and pricing through an intermediary. AI shopping agents could potentially rewrite the entire shopping experience from scratch.
And this is where it gets really interesting. If Amazon can block Perplexity today, what stops them from blocking any AI company tomorrow? We’re talking about a fundamental question of whether platforms get to dictate how users access their services. It’s the same fight we saw with social media APIs years ago, just with AI shopping agents instead of third-party Twitter clients.
The Bigger Battle Coming
Perplexity calling this “a threat to all internet users” might sound dramatic, but they’re not entirely wrong. This is basically the opening shot in what’s going to be a massive battle over AI agents and platform control. Every major tech company is developing AI assistants that could eventually make purchases, and they’re all watching this case closely.
The timing is everything. Perplexity is one of the highest-valued AI startups right now, sitting at that $18 billion valuation. They need to prove their AI can actually do useful things like shop, while Amazon needs to protect their core business. Neither side can afford to back down, which means we’re probably looking at a lengthy legal fight that could shape how AI interacts with e-commerce for years to come.
So who wins? Honestly, it might come down to who customers side with. If people genuinely prefer shopping through AI assistants that cut through the noise, Amazon will have to adapt. But if Amazon’s curated shopping experience proves more valuable than pure efficiency, Perplexity and other AI companies might need to rethink their approach. Either way, this is just the beginning of a much larger conversation about who controls our digital shopping carts.
