Ads Without Eyeballs: Online Shopping's AI Agent Problem

E-Commerce Face Existential Threat as Autonomous Shoppers Bypass Ads Rashmi Ramesh (rashmiramesh_) • December 1, 2025

The online retail industry spent decades honing how to nudge people into clicking the buy button. Now it faces a customer who doesn't want anything at all: the artificial intelligence shopping agent.

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When Amazon sued Perplexity weeks ago in San Francisco federal court, the company alleged that Perplexity's Comet AI agent disguised itself as Google Chrome while accessing customer accounts without authorization. And Amazon does have a point: AI agents collect, process and share personal data across platforms. Once an agent has API access, it can pull purchase histories, transaction capabilities, payment aliases and shipping addresses.

Perplexity countered that Amazon cares more about serving ads and sponsored results than easier shopping - and it, too, has a point. Beneath the accusations ...