By Suzanne Vranica and Sarah Nassauer
Amazon.com may soon be able to lock its website down from outside AI agents, thanks to a recent court ruling. But the battle over how AI bots can shop on our behalf is just heating up.
A federal judge granted Amazon a preliminary injunction earlier this week barring Perplexity from using an AI agent from its Comet browser to access password-protected parts of Amazon's website to shop on behalf of a human customer while the case winds its way through court. Perplexity has seven days to appeal the decision, during which time the order is stayed.
Consumers are farming out everyday tasks to automated agents, and are expected to use those tools for shopping more as well. AI companies see opportunity in building tools that help users find and buy products online, but retailers risk losing eyeballs that previously came to their own websites and stores, along with the related customer data and loyalty.
Amazon, Walmart and other major e-commerce sites are trying to adjust to that fast-changing retail landscape while maintaining their valuable, direct relationships with customers, including by introducing their own AI-powered shopping assistants.
Unlike humans who visit shopping sites, AI bots bypass ads and sponsored search results, a high-margin revenue driver for big retailers. Advertisers are expected to spend $71 billion on so-called "retail media" in the U.S. this year, according to eMarketer.
Amazon has built a massive advertising business over the past decade and brought in $68 billion from ads last year. It has made efforts to keep the entire shopping process within its walls to maximize the amount of time shoppers spend on the site, which in turn can boost ad revenue.
"Without a visit to their site, Amazon has no ability to monetize those shopping desires with an ad," said Ryan Craver, co-founder of Podean, a marketing firm that specializes in Amazon ads.
"No visibility, no click through, no advertising revenue."
Amazon has tried to build its own AI e-commerce model. In 2024, it introduced an AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, which offers product recommendations. And while it has tried to make it difficult for outside AI platforms to collect its product catalog without its permission, it also has started to pull other retailer's products into its Rufus shopping results.
Amazon sued Perplexity in November, alleging the AI company violated computer fraud, data access and abuse regulations. This week's injunction "is an important step in maintaining a trusted shopping experience for Amazon customers. We look forward to continuing to make our case in court," said an Amazon spokeswoman.
A representative for Perplexity said the company would continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want.
Other retailers have shown more willingness to work with AI companies, with boundaries.
Last year Walmart said it had partnered with OpenAI to let shoppers buy its products directly within ChatGPT, the company's AI chatbot. More recently, Walmart clarified that it would use its own AI chatbot, dubbed Sparky, inside ChatGPT or other AI platforms for shopping. It is also phasing out an early version that allowed shoppers to buy items directly within ChatGPT, never visiting Walmart, Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI at Walmart, said at an investor conference last week.
Earlier this year, Walmart said it would also work with Google to create a shopping experience within Gemini, Google's AI platform. It also started testing ads within Sparky.
The Wall Street Journal's parent company, News Corp, has a content deal with OpenAI. Two of News Corp's subsidiaries have sued Perplexity.
Walmart is preparing for a future when AI-enabled bots help find products and shop. Bots are "the next great evolution in retail," Chief Executive John Furner said in January when the company announced its Google partnership.
Target is also experimenting with selling ads alongside its products within AI platforms. Target said last month it would test ads from its retail media business within ChatGPT.
A key draw of retail advertising is its ability to provide advertisers with concrete evidence of ad effectiveness. Shopping bots can be a major obstacle for retail ad sellers trying to accurately measure ad performance, since they don't always identify themselves as bots.
Other retailers besides Amazon may be more willing to work with AI companies because they are eager to get even a sliver of the ad revenue that brands now spend on that site to reach shopper eyeballs, said Melissa Burdick, co-founder of Pacvue, a marketing firm that specializes in e-commerce. "If I'm everybody else, I actually want to get on to the LLMs, because then they have a chance of winning against Amazon," she said, referring to large language models.
Write to Suzanne Vranica at Suzanne.Vranica@wsj.com and Sarah Nassauer at Sarah.Nassauer@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 11, 2026 18:53 ET (22:53 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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