According to CNBC, Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas publicly accused Amazon of “bullying” on Tuesday after receiving what the company called “an aggressive legal threat” from the e-commerce giant. The dispute centers around Perplexity’s Comet browser, which lets users ask its AI assistant to find items and make purchases directly on Amazon. Perplexity claims users “love this experience” but Amazon is demanding they stop the practice immediately. This isn’t isolated – Amazon has been blocking external AI agents from OpenAI, Google, and Meta in recent months. The company didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment about the legal threat.
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Amazon wants to control your shopping experience
Here’s the thing that makes this so interesting. Perplexity’s argument in their blog post is basically that Amazon should be thrilled about this. Easier shopping means more transactions, right? But Perplexity claims Amazon doesn’t actually want that. They say Amazon is more interested in serving ads, pushing sponsored results, and influencing your decisions with upsells.
And you know what? That actually tracks. Amazon’s entire retail business model depends on controlling the customer journey. They make billions from advertising and from steering you toward more profitable products. An AI assistant that cuts through all that noise? That’s a direct threat to their business model.
This is part of a bigger AI vs. web battle
What we’re seeing here is the beginning of a massive conflict between AI companies and the websites they scrape. Amazon blocking OpenAI, Google, and Meta was just the opening shot. Now they’re going after smaller players like Perplexity too.
But here’s the question – does Amazon actually have a legal leg to stand on? Users are still making the purchases, they’re just using a different interface. It’s not like Perplexity is stealing anything – they’re arguably making the shopping experience better. This feels like Amazon using its legal muscle to squash innovation that threatens their control.
The timing is also pretty suspicious. Amazon has its own AI ambitions, and they probably don’t want competitors building better shopping experiences. So they’re playing hardball while they still can.
Perplexity’s public fight is a risky move
Calling out Amazon publicly like this is a bold strategy. For a smaller company like Perplexity, picking a fight with one of the world’s biggest tech giants could backfire spectacularly. But it’s also generating them a ton of publicity and positioning them as the scrappy innovator fighting the corporate bully.
I think we’re going to see more of these battles as AI companies try to build services that sit between users and traditional websites. The web wasn’t built for AI assistants, and companies like Amazon aren’t going to just let third parties control their customer relationships.
This is probably just the first round. Whether Perplexity can actually stand up to Amazon’s legal team remains to be seen, but one thing’s clear – the fight over who controls how we interact with the web is just getting started.
