亚马逊向AI搜索初创公司Perplexity发出最后通牒，要求其AI驱动的购物助手Comet停止访问亚马逊在线商店。亚马逊认为Comet违反了服务条款，因为它没有像其他第三方代理那样明确表明身份。Perplexity则辩称，代理代表用户行为，应享有用户同等权限，无需自我标识。此事件引发了关于AI代理在电商领域如何运作以及网站如何管理其服务的讨论，亚马逊作为电商巨头，其立场可能为未来AI代理的合规性设定标准。

🛍️ 亚马逊对Perplexity的AI购物助手Comet发出法律警告，要求其停止访问平台。亚马逊指出，Comet未能像其他第三方代理那样明确表明其AI身份，这违反了亚马逊的服务条款。

🤖 Perplexity认为，其AI助手是代表用户进行操作，因此应享有与人类用户相同的权限，并认为不应强制要求AI代理进行自我标识，这引发了关于AI代理行为规范的辩论。

⚖️ 亚马逊强调，其他第三方服务（如外卖、订票应用）在代表用户操作时都会明确表明身份，并尊重服务提供商是否允许其接入的决定。亚马逊认为，第三方应用在代表客户进行购买时，应公开透明并尊重服务提供商的选择。

💡 此事件可能预示着未来AI代理在电商、旅行预订等领域的合规性问题。亚马逊作为电商领域的领导者，其要求或将为AI代理如何与第三方平台互动设定行业标准，即明确身份并尊重平台决策。

Amazon has told Perplexity to get its agentic browser out of its online store, the companies both confirmed publicly on Tuesday. After warning Perplexity multiple times that Comet, its AI-powered shopping assistant, was violating Amazon’s terms of service by not identifying itself as an agent, the e-commerce giant sent the AI search engine startup a sternly worded cease-and-desist letter, Perplexity wrote in a blog post titled “Bullying is not innovation.”

“This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon. This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an AI company, and it is a threat to all internet users,” Perplexity lamented in the blog post.

Perplexity’s argument is that, since its agent is acting on behalf of a human user’s direction, the agent automatically has the “same permissions” as the human user. The implication is that it doesn’t have to identify itself as an agent.

Amazon’s response points out that other third-party agents working at the behest of human users do identify themselves. “It is how others operate, including food delivery apps and the restaurants they take orders for, delivery service apps and the stores they shop from, and online travel agencies and the airlines they book tickets with for customers,” Amazon’s statement explains.

If Amazon is to be believed, then Perplexity could simply identify its agent and start shopping. Of course, the risk is that Amazon, which has its own shopping bot called Rufus, could also block Comet — or any other third-party agentic shopper — from its site.

Amazon suggests as much as its statement, which also says, “We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions whether or not to participate.”

Perplexity claims that Amazon would block the shopping bot because Amazon wants to sell advertising and product placements. Unlike human shoppers, a bot tasked with buying a new laundry basket presumably wouldn’t find itself buying a more expensive one, or getting lured into buying the latest Brandon Sanderson novel and a new set of earphones (on sale!).

If all of this sounds a bit familiar, that’s because it is. A few months ago, Cloudflare published research accusing Perplexity of scraping websites while specifically defying requests from websites blocking AI bots. Interestingly, many people came to Perplexity’s defense that time, because this wasn’t a clear-cut case of web crawler bad behavior. Cloudflare documented how the AI was accessing a specific public website when its user asked about that specific website. Perplexity fans argued that this is exactly what every human-operated web browser does.

On the other hand, Perplexity was using some questionable methods to do that accessing when a website opted out of bots, like hiding its identity.

As TechCrunch reported at that time, that was a harbinger of things to come if the agentic world materializes as Silicon Valley predicts it will. If consumers and companies outsource their shopping, travel bookings, and restaurant reservations to bots, will it be in the best interest of websites to block bots entirely? How will they allow and work with them?

Perplexity may be right in that Amazon is setting a precedent. As the 800-pound gorilla in e-commerce, it is clearly saying that the way this should work is for an agent to identify itself and let the website decide.