US Court Temporarily Bars Perplexity’s Comet from Auto-Shopping on Amazon
A US district judge on March 10 granted a temporary injunction stopping Perplexity AI’s Comet browser agent from accessing Amazon, scraping customer shopping data, or using users’ accounts to place orders. The court found Amazon likely to succeed on claims that Comet accessed password‑protected Prime accounts with users’ permission but without Amazon’s authorization, produced non-human traffic that could distort ad metrics, and deployed an update to circumvent Amazon’s anti‑AI blocks. The order requires Perplexity to delete collected customer data and is stayed seven days to allow an appeal to the Ninth Circuit. Perplexity called the move “bullying” and said it will seek a stay and appeal. The dispute, filed by Amazon in November 2025 under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and state fraud law, tests whether autonomous AI agents inherit user permissions to act on third‑party platforms. Traders should note risks to platforms and ad-driven revenue models, potential regulatory scrutiny of agentic shopping tools, and heightened compliance and security requirements for services integrating AI agents — factors that may affect tokenized ad platforms, platform tokens, and projects that enable autonomous commerce. Keywords: Comet browser, Perplexity, Amazon injunction, AI agents, ad metrics.
Neutral
Impact on cryptocurrency prices is likely neutral. The ruling concerns AI browser agents, platform control, and ad-metric integrity on Amazon — not a specific cryptocurrency. Short-term market reaction for crypto is likely muted because no crypto tokens or exchanges are directly implicated. However, there are indirect effects traders should monitor: increased regulatory scrutiny and platform enforcement could raise compliance costs for projects that integrate autonomous agents or tokenized ad systems, which may weigh on niche platform tokens tied to ad-revenue models. In the medium to long term, clearer legal precedent restricting autonomous shopping agents could reduce adoption of agent-driven commerce features and slow product rollouts that rely on automated account access. That may modestly pressure tokens for companies building marketplaces, decentralized ad networks, or agent-enabled commerce if those projects depend on similar account‑level automation. Conversely, projects emphasizing explicit API access, on‑chain authorization, and privacy-preserving agent designs could see relative demand increase. Overall, absence of direct crypto exposure keeps the market impact neutral, with selective sector risk for ad/marketplace tokens.