Perplexity accuses Amazon of ‘bullying’ after e-commerce giant sends cease-and-desist letter
There are two things that are becoming clear about Perplexity, an AI-powered “answer engine” startup: It has developed a reputation of drawing the ire of numerous media companies, and it knows how to fire off an angry blog post defending its actions.
The company was sued last year by News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, which accused Perplexity of “engaging in a massive amount of illegal copying of publishers’ copyrighted works and diverting customers and critical revenues away from those copyright holders.”
Wired and Forbes have also both accused Perplexity of scraping their content, while The New York Times sent the company a cease-and-desist letter.
“The lawsuit reflects an adversarial posture between media and tech that is—while depressingly familiar—fundamentally shortsighted, unnecessary, and self-defeating,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post after News Corp. sued it.
The company said in its blog post that there were roughly “three dozen lawsuits by media companies against generative AI tools,” with the “common theme” of the complaints being “that they wish this technology didn’t exist.”
An ‘aggressive legal threat’ over shopping bots
But it’s not just media companies that are coming after Perplexity. In a blog post on Tuesday titled “Bullying is Not Innovation,” the company said that it had “received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon.”
Comet is Perplexity’s new browser with an AI agentic assistant that can search Amazon’s platform for a product that a user requests and then purchase it for the user. According to Perplexity, since the AI agent is operating on behalf of a human, it should have the same rights as the human.
Amazon doesn’t see it this way, demanding that Perplexity have its Comet agent identify itself, which it says other third-party agents do. Amazon’s argument is that companies like itself should be allowed to opt-out of allowing the agents on its platform.
“This helps ensure a positive customer experience and it is how others operate, including food delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for, delivery service apps and the stores they shop from, and online travel agencies and the airlines they book tickets with for customers,” the company wrote in response to Perplexity’s blog post.
“Agentic third-party applications such as Perplexity’s Comet have the same obligations, and we’ve repeatedly requested that Perplexity remove Amazon from the Comet experience, particularly in light of the significantly degraded shopping and customer service experience it provides.”
Amazon also published its cease-and-desist letter after Perplexity’s blog post addressed it.
Of course, Amazon has its own shopping bot called Rufus, which could give it more of a reason to block Comet’s agent from its site.
Perplexity claims that it “is fighting for the rights of users” and that giving users “choice and freedom are at the heart of everything we build.”
“Perhaps that’s what makes us a target for corporate bullies,” the company said. “But Amazon shouldn’t forget what it’s like to be our size and passionate about a world-changing product. They too once faced intimidating threats and fought aggressively in every case to give users a better choice.”