Ninth Circuit Weighs AI Shopping Fraud Case: California Brief

AI Shopping Case Tests Computer Fraud Law

Photographer: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images

A decades-old anti-hacking law is being tested in Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity AI over one of Silicon Valley’s newest products: AI agents that complete tasks for users, Annelise Levy reports.

Amazon says the startup violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by failing to disclose when its Comet AI browser agent was shopping on a human’s behalf and transmitting sensitive data to its servers. Perplexity argues Amazon wants an “alarming expansion” of the law to cover conduct categorically different from the “breaking and entering” Congress meant to prevent. The parties will face ...