The Pulse
Perplexity Asks Court to Dismiss Amazon’s AI-Agent Lawsuit
Perplexity is asking a federal judge to dismiss Amazon’s lawsuit over its Comet shopping assistant after a Ninth Circuit ruling rejected Amazon’s theory that Perplexity accessed its computers. The company argues that the appellate decision
AI.info Team ·
Perplexity Turns the Ninth Circuit’s Ruling Against Amazon
Perplexity is asking a federal judge to dismiss Amazon’s lawsuit over Comet, arguing that an appellate ruling has removed the legal foundation for the case. The request follows an August 4 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that vacated a preliminary injunction blocking Perplexity’s AI assistant from interacting with Amazon.com.
Amazon sued Perplexity in November 2025, claiming that Comet’s Assistant accessed password-protected Amazon accounts without authorization and violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, along with California’s analogous Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. Perplexity now argues that the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of “access” defeats both claims.
“This case asks whether a dominant online platform can turn a criminal hacking statute into a tool for policing how its customers use the internet,” Perplexity said, according to MLex. “The Ninth Circuit has answered with an unequivocal no.”
The Dispute Turns on Who Accessed Amazon
The Ninth Circuit did not decide the entire lawsuit. Its ruling addressed Amazon’s request for preliminary relief and held that Amazon was unlikely to show, on the record before the court, that Perplexity itself accessed Amazon’s computers within the meaning of the CFAA.
Comet runs locally on a user’s machine and works like a conventional web browser. When a user directs the Assistant to find or purchase an item, Comet sends screenshots of the browser view to Perplexity’s servers. Those servers return instructions that guide the browser through Amazon.com.
The appellate panel said that arrangement made the user—not Perplexity—the party accessing Amazon. The Assistant acted as a tool carrying out the user’s instructions, while Perplexity’s servers did not directly communicate with Amazon’s servers.
The court compared the system to a browser such as Apple’s Safari performing tasks on behalf of a user. It also rejected Amazon’s argument that the Assistant’s autonomous behavior should be attributed to Perplexity because the company’s servers supplied instructions.
The ruling was narrow. The panel said it was deciding only how the CFAA’s access requirement applied to the Assistant’s interactions with Amazon on the factual record in that case. It did not create a general legal rule for every AI agent or resolve other possible claims involving contracts, privacy, consumer protection or tort law.
Amazon’s Injunction Collapses, but the Case Does Not
A federal judge in the Northern District of California granted Amazon a preliminary injunction in March 2026. The order barred Perplexity and its agents from accessing or attempting to access Amazon’s protected computer systems with AI agents. It also prohibited the creation or use of Amazon accounts for that purpose and directed Perplexity to destroy Amazon data obtained through such access.
The district court found that Amazon had shown a likelihood of success under the CFAA and California law. It also accepted Amazon’s argument that the company had spent more than $5,000 responding to Comet, including developing tools to block the assistant and detect further access.
The Ninth Circuit vacated that injunction and sent the case back to the district court. The panel said the lower court had applied the wrong access analysis and had also weighed the remaining injunction factors incorrectly. It found that the balance of the equities and public interest favored Perplexity under the circumstances.
That decision removes the order that directly restricted Comet, but it does not dismiss Amazon’s complaint. Amazon may still pursue claims that the appellate decision did not resolve, and the district court must determine how the lawsuit proceeds after the remand.
Amazon’s Platform Rules Remain Separate From the Hacking Claims
Amazon told Perplexity before Comet’s release that its AI products were not permitted to access the Amazon Store. Amazon repeated that position after the Assistant began interacting with the site.
A central point of conflict involved Perplexity’s decision not to use a user-agent string identifying the activity as AI-agent traffic. The mechanism would have allowed Amazon to recognize and block the Assistant. The parties also disputed whether Perplexity changed that identifier after Amazon initially detected and blocked the tool.
The Ninth Circuit’s decision focused on the statutory meaning of computer access, not on whether Amazon’s terms of service or other agreements could restrict Comet. Perplexity’s motion therefore targets Amazon’s anti-hacking claims rather than every possible theory in the lawsuit.
The Judge Must Decide Whether Amazon Can Recast the Case
Perplexity’s dismissal request puts the Ninth Circuit’s narrow holding at the center of the next stage. The company argues that Amazon cannot prove a required element of the CFAA or the California statute because Perplexity did not access Amazon’s computers directly and the user controlled the Assistant’s activity.
Amazon’s response will determine whether it argues that the appellate ruling should be limited to the preliminary-injunction record or that other allegations support the case independently of the access theory rejected by the panel. The Ninth Circuit itself emphasized that its decision did not address whether Perplexity could face liability under other legal theories.
For now, the practical result is narrower than Perplexity’s rhetoric suggests. The appellate ruling eliminates Amazon’s preliminary injunction and gives Perplexity a strong basis for seeking dismissal of the anti-hacking claims, but the district court—not the appeals panel—must decide whether any part of Amazon’s lawsuit survives.
Read the Ninth Circuit opinion.