In a novel legal dispute, the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Amazon was unlikely to succeed on its claim that Perplexity's AI agents violated a federal computer-hacking law.
The ruling is the first by a federal appeals court to address whether AI agents acting on behalf of users can legally access online platforms, a question with broad implications for the fast-growing field of agentic AI tools that can browse, shop and transact across the web.
Spokespeople for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.
"Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want," company spokesperson Jesse Dwyer said in a statement. "We have always been confident the truth will prevail and the rights of users will not be chipped away."
Agentic AI systems can plan, reason and execute tasks with limited human oversight. Amazon sued Perplexity in November, accusing the AI startup of covertly accessing private Amazon customer accounts through its Comet browser and associated AI agent, which can log into users' online shopping accounts and place orders on their behalf.
The lawsuit said Perplexity's system posed security risks and that it had ignored repeated requests to stop.
Perplexity responded the lawsuit lacked merit and was a "bald attempt" to block Amazon users from using Comet because AI agents "don't have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with."
A federal judge in California temporarily blocked Perplexity in March from using its agentic AI on Amazon's platform, finding Amazon had presented "strong evidence" that Perplexity's AI agent broke a US computer fraud and abuse law.
The 9th Circuit overturned the ban on Tuesday, favouring Perplexity's argument that it did not violate a statute that prohibits people from accessing computers and obtaining information from them without permission.
The appeals court said it was Perplexity's users, using the company's AI agents, who "accessed" Amazon's platform under the law, rather than Perplexity itself.
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