Amazon has sent a cease‑and‑desist letter to Perplexity, demanding that its AI‑powered shopping assistant, Comet, be removed from the Amazon marketplace. The e‑commerce giant warned that the bot violates its terms of service by failing to identify itself as an agent. Perplexity responded with a blog post defending its approach, arguing that the bot operates under human direction and therefore should inherit the same permissions as the user. Amazon countered that other third‑party agents openly identify themselves and that Perplexity could simply comply. The dispute revives earlier controversy over Perplexity’s web‑scraping practices and raises broader questions about the future of agentic AI on commercial platforms. Leia mais →

Perplexity Shopping, an AI‑powered shopping assistant built into the Perplexity AI platform, helps users locate and purchase items through natural‑language queries. Launched in 2024 by founders Aravind Srinivas, Denis Yarats, Johnny Ho, and Andy Konwinski, the tool provides product suggestions, price comparisons, reviews, images, and a Snap to Shop feature that matches uploaded photos to online listings. It operates on a free tier and a Pro tier priced at $20 a month, the latter unlocking advanced models, one‑click purchasing, and order tracking. While praised for convenience and personalized recommendations, the service still faces limitations such as incomplete retailer coverage and certain features locked behind the paid subscription. Leia mais →

Pinterest CEO Bill Ready told investors on the company’s second‑quarter earnings call that the platform is evolving into an AI‑enabled shopping assistant, offering proactive recommendations that feel personal. While he highlighted the company’s use of proprietary multimodal AI for visual search, personalization and advertising efficiencies, he cautioned that the “agentic web” – where AI agents shop on a user’s behalf – remains far off. Ready also addressed growing concerns over AI‑generated content, noting new labeling and filtering tools, and discussed the firm’s recent financial results, user demographics and talent strategy. Leia mais →