Court issues preliminary injunction but delays it to allow an appeal
Perplexity's AI browser Comet has been banned from accessing Amazon's website after the e-commerce giant obtained a court-ordered preliminary injunction.
But the ban won't take effect immediately. The court on Monday issued an administrative stay of its order [PDF] for seven days to allow Perplexity to seek relief from the US Court of Appeals, which the company intends to do [PDF].
"Perplexity will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want," a company spokesman told The Register.
Nonetheless, the court order casts a shadow on the widely hyped agent economy that imagines software agents visiting websites and buying things on behalf of human users. It finds that Amazon is likely to succeed in its claims that Perplexity has violated federal and state computer fraud laws by disguising its bot and breaking Amazon's site access rules.
The judge's take on the case suggests automated e-commerce transactions will require negotiation and agreements as opposed to the tech industry's preference to move fast and break things. Evidence of this can be seen in eBay's decision earlier this year to update its user agreement to ban shopping bots.
The preliminary injunction, if not derailed through appeal, requires Perplexity to stop its AI agent from accessing Amazon’s protected systems and destroy data obtained through those accesses.
When is a customer not a customer?
Amazon sued [PDF] Perplexity last November, arguing that the AI company deliberately disguised its automated browser to make it look like a customer using Chrome. In doing so, the biz argues, Perplexity is violating Amazon's rules prohibiting automated data gathering and is creating a security risk by relying on user credentials.
At the time, Amazon accused Perplexity of ignoring its cease-and-desist demands and putting customers at risk by requiring them to expose their login details to a browser with documented security vulnerabilities.
"When customers who use the Comet AI agent cannot trust that their personal account information is secure, or when they suffer from a degraded shopping experience, their confidence in the Amazon brand is diminished," Amazon's attorneys said in the complaint. "Perplexity's interference with Amazon's ability to offer a secure and positive customer experience, and the corresponding erosion in customer trust, is a quintessential irreparable harm."
Perplexity pushed back in a blog post that contended a software agent is the equivalent of a human employee.
"Today, Amazon announced it does not believe in your right to hire labor, to have an assistant or an employee acting on your behalf," the company said in response to Amazon's litigation last November. "This isn't a reasonable legal position, it's a bully tactic to scare disruptive companies like Perplexity out of making life better for people."
In its opposition/response [PDF] to Amazon's request for a preliminary injunction, Perplexity argues that the injunction should not be granted because Amazon has not shown that its fraud claims are likely to succeed.
US District Judge Maxine Chesney disagrees.
In her order, she wrote, "Amazon has provided strong evidence that Perplexity, through its Comet browser, accesses with the Amazon user's permission but without authorization by Amazon, the user's password-protected account … thereby obtaining information as to the user's private Amazon account information, and that such information is transmitted to Perplexity's servers for the purpose of conducting said user's requested tasks."
And she said the evidence Amazon has provided about the expense incurred trying to thwart Perplexity's Comet from accessing its site is "essentially undisputed."
"[T]he Court has found Amazon, not Perplexity, is likely to succeed on the merits and that Amazon will face irreparable harm absent preliminary relief," the judge concluded. ®