On August 4, 2026, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Amazon v. Perplexity, reversing a lower court decision that had blocked Perplexity’s AI-powered browser feature, the Assistant. Amazon had sued Perplexity under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the country’s main anti-hacking statute, over the Assistant’s ability to browse Amazon.com on a user’s behalf. The appeals court decided the law’s key word, “whoever,” means a person, and the Assistant is a tool. The technical detail that settled it was that the user’s own browser talked to Amazon’s servers, while Perplexity’s servers never did. The court stated, “We do not establish a new legal regime governing agentic AI,” and the ruling hinged on Perplexity’s product design. If the AI’s own servers reach out to a website directly, the outcome might flip. According to an analysis from the law firm Ropes and Gray, architecture decisions now carry legal weight, and companies should not read the ruling as permission to ignore access rules. A website’s terms of service still bind users, and breaking them can trigger claims like breach of contract. For businesses seeking to keep automated tools off their sites, Ropes and Gray suggests tightening terms of service, putting sensitive data behind login walls, and using bot detection and rate limiting.