Amazon has won a court order temporarily banning AI start-up Perplexity from using its shopping agent to access Amazon’s e-commerce platform, amid a lawsuit over the product.

Amazon sued Perplexity in November alleging it refused to stop accessing the platform via its agent, which is embedded into Perplexity’s Comet browser, and took steps to “conceal” the agent’s activities.

Perplexity has called the lawsuit in US District Court in the Northern District of California a “bully tactic”.

US District Judge Maxine Chesney said in a court filing that Amazon has provided “strong evidence” that Comet accessed Amazon at the user’s direction, but “without authorisation” from Amazon.

Amazon submitted evidence that it spent more than $5,000 to respond to the issue by working to block Comet and prevent “future unauthorised access”, she said.

Amazon said it would continue to make its case in court, while Perplexity said it “will continue to fight for the right of internet users to choose whatever AI they want”.

The order, dated 9 March, is suspended for one week to give Perplexity a chance to appeal.

The agent is one of a new generation of AI tools that promise to take actions semi-autonomously on behalf of users, such as making e-commerce purchases; but companies are jockeying to develop such tools while preventing competitors from infringing on their business – a process in which courts are increasingly being asked to take a role.

Amazon, for instance, is blocking Perplexity from its site while developing its own Rufus AI shopping chatbot.

It has also been accused of scraping the e-commerce sites of small vendors and making AI-powered purchases from them without informing them or obtaining consent.