Written by: Haim Ravia, Dotan Hammer
On August 4, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that had barred Perplexity AI, Inc. from operating its Comet Assistant on Amazon’s website (Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc., No. 26-1444). The district court had granted the injunction in March 2026 on claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA).
The court held that Amazon is unlikely to succeed in proving the “access” element of either statute. The CFAA imposes liability on “whoever … intentionally accesses” a protected computer, and the court reasoned that the Comet Assistant is “a tool, not a person” capable of accessing a computer within the meaning of that language. Because the Assistant runs on the user’s own device — taking screenshots locally and receiving instructions back from Perplexity’s servers — “Perplexity itself does not directly communicate with Amazon’s servers.” It is therefore the user, not Perplexity, who accesses Amazon, with the Assistant serving as an AI tool in the user’s hands. The court distinguished cases involving direct server-to-server communication, placing the Assistant closer to a passive browsing tool than to active intrusion. The CDAFA claim failed on the same access requirement.
The court was careful about the reach of its decision. It expressly disclaimed establishing “a new legal regime governing agentic AI,” and stated that it was not addressing whether Perplexity could avoid liability in other contexts, including tort claims, nor restricting Amazon’s ability to regulate access to its site through private terms of service. The preliminary injunction was vacated and the case remanded for further proceedings. The practical significance for operators of websites is that anti-hacking statutes may be a weak instrument against user-directed AI agents that execute on the user’s own device, and that contract — terms of service, and their enforceability against automated agents — is likely to become the principal battleground.
Click here to read the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc..
