Perplexity’s Bid for AI Bot Access to Amazon Raises Eyebrows (1)

Perplexity AI Inc. met with a skeptical federal appeals court panel Thursday in the company’s bid to reverse a lower court order banning its Comet shopping bots from Amazon.com.

During oral argument, judges on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit pushed back on Perplexity’s argument that the AI agents gain authorized access to Amazon.com Inc.‘s site through its users, likening consumers’ prompts to Comet to search functions on Safari, Chrome, and other browsers.

The three-judge panel, however, struggled to conceptualize arguments on both sides, noting that the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that Amazon accused ...