AMZN
The robot lawyer era is here
Amazon is back in court, and this time the drama isn’t about packages, Prime, or ads — it’s about whether an AI agent can be treated like a trespasser. A federal appeals court is weighing Amazon’s claim that Perplexity’s shopping-focused Comet system accessed customer accounts without permission, potentially running afoul of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the 1986 hacking law that apparently did not come with an AI update.
The big question: who’s responsible?
The judges kept circling the same awkward little tech-era problem: if an AI agent does the clicking, who gets blamed?
- The user who gave the bot the password?
- Perplexity, the company that built and deployed it?
- Or the bot itself, if we’re somehow now pretending software has intent?
Judge John Hinderaker basically said the statute wasn’t really built for this kind of thing, which is code for: welcome to the legal fog machine.
Why Amazon cares
Amazon argues Perplexity’s agents entered private customer accounts without authorization and kept doing it even after cease-and-desist demands. A California judge already issued a preliminary block in March, saying Amazon had shown strong evidence the AI system may have violated the law.
If Amazon wins, it could strengthen platform owners’ ability to rein in AI agents that behave like overeager interns with admin privileges. If Perplexity wins, it’s a louder green light for agentic AI to roam around the web — and potentially a bigger headache for platforms trying to control access.
Not the only legal cloud
Perplexity was also recently dragged into a separate privacy lawsuit tied to data-sharing claims involving Meta and Alphabet, though that case was dismissed after the plaintiff withdrew it. Still, the broader theme is obvious: once AI starts acting on behalf of users, the legal system has to decide whether that’s automation… or trespassing with a better interface.
Big picture: this case could help draw the first real boundary lines for agentic AI. And those lines may end up mattering a lot more than the chatty product demos.