Amazon sues AI startup over browser’s automated shopping and buying feature
Amazon accuses Perplexity of covertly accessing customer accounts and disguising AI activity as human browsing
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/05/amazon-perplexity-ai-lawsuitOpen linkView original on piefed.blahaj.zone
12 replies
You can't use YOUR AI on our systems because we are already using OUR AI to screw our customers.
.... And...?
🤣🤣🤣
Translation "We can't track our customers with this AI and it makes us mad"
I think it is more "we cannot push the products where we make the most money instead of what customers want".
Amazon search was almost famously bad with them pushing certain products to the top. That's what they mean by "tailored experience".
Big Tech truly did this to themselves. If Google hadn't enshittified its search, LLMs wouldn't have become nearly as popular, where so many people are using LLMs as search engine replacements.
Not that I’m an Amazon apologist, but Perplexity has been accused of ignoring robots.txt quite a bit. It’s the “AI” app I’ve used most as I like the citations and find it does the most accurate data analysis (especially for my bored baseball stat searches), but I’m starting to question their integrity more than the usual tech company.
There isn't a single AI company that abides by robots.txt. They don't give a fuck and will happily ddos your site because hey, watcha gonna do, sue them?
Robots.txt has always seemed more like a treasure map than a Keep Out sign.
If they were smarter they’d just detect AI agents and quote them higher prices.
Where do they get the money for these lawsuits?
Oh yeah, their customers. Lol.
If you can’t enslave them, you might as well sue them.