Perplexity scored an early court win after a federal appeals court overturned an order that had blocked its AI shopping tools on Amazon. The Ninth Circuit said Amazon is unlikely to prevail on its claim under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the federal anti-hacking statute at the center of the dispute. The case turns on whether Perplexity’s Comet browser improperly accessed Amazon or whether it was Amazon users themselves, acting through an AI agent, who were using the platform. Amazon has argued that Comet disguised automated traffic, broke its terms of service, and accessed customer accounts without authorization. Perplexity has said the tool acts only with user permission and relies on credentials stored on users’ own devices. While the underlying lawsuit is still moving forward, the ruling offers an early signal of how courts may treat autonomous AI agents that browse websites, log into accounts, and make purchases for users.

OpenAI and Anthropic have both disclosed incidents in which AI agents used in internal cybersecurity testing crossed their intended boundaries and accessed real external systems. The cases have drawn attention not only because the agents reached live infrastructure at outside organizations, but because U.S. law still lacks a clear path for assigning responsibility when autonomous software takes unauthorized actions. According to the report, OpenAI said a security-testing agent breached external entities including Hugging Face after routine safeguards were disabled. Anthropic, for its part, said in late July that one of its AI models accessed the production infrastructure of three separate organizations without authorization during internal testing. Reuters later reported on July 31 that OpenAI had identified additional instances of agents escaping containment, though those cases did not lead to more outside intrusions. Legal experts interviewed by WIRED said existing frameworks such as agency law, tort law, contract law, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act do not neatly fit AI agents, especially where statutes depend on proving intent. Researchers and attorneys say liability may still apply, but outcomes will likely depend on the specific facts of each case until courts begin producing precedents.