Amazon has sued AI startup Perplexity over its Comet AI browser, alleging that the tool’s autonomous shopping and agent-style features violate Amazon’s terms of service by acting like robots to access accounts and make purchases on users’ behalf — behavior Amazon says degrades customer experience and breaches platform rules. The legal battle is seen as a landmark case in the emerging world of agentic AI, which could set precedent over whether AI systems are legally allowed to act as purchasing or booking agents for users, a question with significant implications for travel distribution, online agencies, metasearch, and other industries that rely on intermediated transactions. For travel companies, the outcome could influence how AI assistants interact with supplier systems, who “owns” the booking relationship, and whether autonomous agents can be trusted to carry out bookings and transactions without direct human control. Perplexity argues Amazon is trying to block innovation, but the case highlights broader tensions over security, user trust, brand control, and the rules governing AI agents in e-commerce and travel contexts.
