Court grants Perplexity temporary permission to access Amazon’s site with ‘agentic AI’
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on March 16 temporarily overturned a district court injunction that would have blocked Perplexity's Comet browser from accessing Amazon's marketplace data via agentic AI — meaning Perplexity can continue scraping and transacting on Amazon on behalf of users while appeals play out. This is not a minor scraper dispute: Perplexity's agentic commerce layer allows its AI to browse, compare, and complete purchases across retailers without the customer ever visiting Amazon directly. The immediate implication is that a third-party AI layer is legally operating between Amazon and its buyers, potentially intercepting purchase intent at scale. The ruling covers public-facing Amazon data for now, but the boundary between public and password-protected remains the central legal fault line.
The non-obvious play here is that agentic AI browsers like Comet are emerging as the next category of 'search' that Amazon cannot fully control — analogous to how Google once intermediated product discovery before Amazon clawed it back with Prime and sponsored ads.
If Perplexity's AI is completing purchases on behalf of users, it controls the last-touch attribution, which means Amazon's sponsored product ads and DSP targeting lose their conversion signal integrity — a direct hit to ROAS measurement accuracy for any seller spending $50K+/month on Amazon advertising.
A $10M/year seller should immediately audit whether their conversion data in Seller Central is showing anomalous attribution gaps or flat CTR with rising spend, as agentic browsers can trigger impressions without human intent signals.
The second domino is that Perplexity will almost certainly use this legal window to lock in enterprise and free-tier user habits before any permanent injunction lands.
This legal battle is the opening round of a structural war over who owns the commerce intent layer in the AI era — and it mirrors the 2010s fight over Google Shopping dominance, except the stakes are checkout completion, not just clicks.
The 2026 marketplace landscape is bifurcating: platforms like Amazon want to own the full session from discovery to delivery, while AI browsers like Perplexity Comet want to own the user relationship and treat all retailers as interchangeable fulfillment backends.
For sellers and brands, this trend means catalog data hygiene, structured content, and API-accessible product feeds become competitive moats — if your data isn't clean enough for an AI agent to confidently select your product over a competitor's, you lose the sale before a human ever sees your listing.
Pull your Search Term Report in Seller Central this week and filter for branded keywords — if your branded conversion rate has dropped more than 10% MoM while impressions held flat, you may already be losing last-touch purchases to agentic AI intermediaries. Respond by tightening your branded bid strategy and adding 'Add to Cart' promotions that only convert inside Amazon's native session.
Contact your Amazon DSP rep or agency trading desk this week and explicitly ask how agentic browser traffic is being classified in your audience segments — if they cannot tell you, pause any retargeting spend over $5K/week until attribution methodology is clarified, because you may be paying to retarget AI agents, not humans.
In the next 30-90 days, prepare for Amazon to respond to this ruling by accelerating its own on-site AI assistant (Rufus) and potentially introducing new 'verified human session' ad inventory at a premium — brands with strong review velocity, A+ content, and Brand Story assets will be favored by Rufus's retrieval logic, so audit your top-10 ASINs for content completeness now before Amazon's algorithm weights shift.
Bottom Line
Agentic AI just legally inserted itself between your listings and your buyer — your ad spend attribution may already be lying to you.
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Agentic AI just legally inserted itself between your listings and your buyer — your ad spend attribution may already be lying to you.
Key Stat / Trigger
March 16 appeals court ruling temporarily restoring Perplexity agentic access to Amazon
Focus on the operational implication, not just the headline.
Full Coverage
A legal battle between the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered discovery platform Perplexity and Amazon spilled over to a U. S. appeals court following a judge’s order on March 9. U. S. District Judge Maxin Chesney ordered that Perplexity should not be allowed to access password-protected information on Amazon’s site.
That order came in response to Amazon’s request for a preliminary injunction, halting activity taking place through Perplexity Comet web browser. However, the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted that order on March 16. It gave Perplexity a temporary window to continue operating as it had been previously.
Meanwhile, Perplexity continues to appeal the district court’s decision from March 9. News Perplexity's agentic commerce experience to expand to free users Brian Warmoth | Nov 19, 2025
Original Source
This briefing is based on reporting from Digital Commerce 360. Use the original post for full primary-source context.
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