A federal appeals court is weighing how a decades-old U.S. hacking statute should apply to an AI tool accused of getting into Amazon customer accounts without permission, a dispute that could shape who bears responsibility when software acts on a user's behalf.
Perplexity AI's shopping-focused "agentic" system unlawfully accessed Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) customer accounts without permission, potentially triggering liability under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Reuters reported.
Judge John Hinderaker, sitting by designation on the panel, noted the statute was "not really built" with AI in mind and asked a central question running through the case: "Does an AI agent ever have intent?"
Benzinga contacted Perplexity AI and Amazon for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The dispute stems from Perplexity's appeal of a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked it from deploying its AI agents for shopping tasks on Amazon. Amazon sued the startup in November, alleging that its Comet browser and associated AI agents entered private customer accounts without authorization and posed security risks, Reuters reported. The company also claims Perplexity continued the activity despite repeated cease-and-desist demands.
Perplexity has rejected those claims, calling the lawsuit meritless and describing it as a "bald attempt" to restrict Amazon customers from using its Comet browser.
It has also argued that AI agents "don't have eyeballs to see the pervasive advertising Amazon bombards its users with," pushing back on the idea that the system is equivalent to a human user navigating the site.
A California federal judge issued a preliminary block in March after finding Amazon had presented "strong evidence" that Perplexity's agent accessed Amazon systems in a way that could violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The appellate panel is now weighing whether the relevant legal actor is the user, the AI agent itself, or the company that built and deployed the system.
Judge Eric Tung suggested one possible framing: "the user is giving the key to Perplexity, and Perplexity is then entering Amazon’s servers or computers. Much of this case turns on the proper analogy."
Perplexity was also the subject of a separate California lawsuit filed in April, which alleged the company shared users' personal data with Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META) and Alphabet Inc.'s Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL)(NASDAQ:GOOG) in violation of state privacy laws.
That case was dismissed last month after the plaintiff voluntarily withdrew the complaint. Because it was dismissed without prejudice, the claim could be refiled in the future.
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