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Originally posted this in another thread, but very curious what others think. Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon? Can I ask my personal assistant

Originally posted this in another thread, but very curious what others think. Can I ask my partner to buy a product on Amazon? Can I ask my personal assistant to buy a product on Amazon? Can I hire a contractor to buy products on Amazon? Can I communicate with a contractor via API to direct them what products to buy? What if there is no human on the other end and its an LLM? Same issue with LinkedIn. I know execs who have assistants running their socials. Is this legal? Like, where do we draw the line? In the future, would the only way to shop on Amazon be with approved VR goggles that scan your retina to verify you are a human?

simonw 11mo ago
Can I use Amazon Mechanical Turk to place orders for myself on Amazon?
paxys 11mo ago
The law has nothing to do with it. Amazon is a private company and can make rules about who can or can't place orders on its website. When you create an account you agree to their ToS.
- kelnos 11mo ago
  I don't think GP meant "legal" in the literal sense. Regardless, the post's meaning is still the same if you replace "Is this legal?" with "Does this conform to Amazon's ToS?", so please read it charitably and avoid being pedantic about this sort of thing.
  - thrill 11mo ago
    Legal matters are all about pedantry.
- andreybaskov 11mo ago
  Interesting. Amazon ToS actually has a section about agents - https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GLSBYFE9MGKKQXXM https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... And they even provide a definition of what an Agent is: "Agent” means any software or service that takes autonomous or semi-autonomous action on behalf of, or at the instruction of, any person or entity. Though to me it raises even more questions. What is a software that takes "autonomous" action on my behalf. Is curl "autonomous"?
  - afandian 11mo ago
    > Is curl "autonomous"? Only when you supply -L
  - paxys 11mo ago
    "autonomous or semi-autonomous" is the key phrase. If you manually invoke a curl command then no, it isn't an agent. If you write code that itself determines when and how to invoke that command then it is.
    - anon84873628 11mo ago
      Am I not manually instructing the agent to buy a certain product? What if I set up a cron job to buy a certain product every month - is that not autonomous? What if it is first querying my live toilet paper sticks to make the decision?
      - andreybaskov 11mo ago
        Exactly. It's software - `curl` or LLM. It's a function that accepts input and produces output. One is much more sophisticated that the other, but it's made out of the same machine instructions, there is no magic. What's the criteria that makes one function "autonomous" and the other one "manual"? I feel it really boils down to this.
whatever1 11mo ago
No. That is why you have personal credentials to log in to Amazon. If you want to have delegating capabilities you can open an Amazon business account.
- kelnos 11mo ago
  Would Amazon be ok with me opening a business account, creating credentials for a Perplexity assistant, and having it buy products? Based on this article, I'd think not?
  - whatever1 11mo ago
    Even if it was not AI it would not be allowed. You are effectively creating dummy accounts with bots. Even the SEC would be against it, as it would inflate the user base of Amazon.
- andreybaskov 11mo ago
  Me and my wife share the same Amazon account. Should I open a business account to do grocery shopping?
  - yalok 11mo ago
    Amazon support family sharing for the same home address - 2 adults and 4 children I think can share the same Prime My wife and I used to share 1 account, but then I wanted to buy her a gift that had to be a surprise - so had to create a new account and add it as part of the family to the original one…. Then kids grew up and wanted to make small orders themselves, and I didn’t want them to see our order history…
    - andreybaskov 11mo ago
      I know its there. But we _prefer_ to have a single account to simplify tracking and picking up packages. I'm curious if from their point of view (or their ToS) I'm even allowed to share my credentials with anyone else. 1Password shared vaults are there for a reason - people share credentials all the time, business or personal.
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> where do we draw the line? Perplexify has shown itself to be a bad actor [1][2][3], and possibly incompetent, too [4]. We need to draw a line, eventually. But it’s far from urgent. And I don’t think Perplexity should be the one deciding. [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-unde... [2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses-bid-dismiss-or-transfer-news-corp-copyright-case-2025-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses... [3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/reddit-sues-to-block-perplexity-from-scraping-google-search-results/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/reddit-sues-to-b... [4] https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/ https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/

simonw 11mo ago

Can I use Amazon Mechanical Turk to place orders for myself on Amazon?

paxys 11mo ago

The law has nothing to do with it. Amazon is a private company and can make rules about who can or can't place orders on its website. When you create an account you agree to their ToS.

kelnos 11mo ago
I don't think GP meant "legal" in the literal sense. Regardless, the post's meaning is still the same if you replace "Is this legal?" with "Does this conform to Amazon's ToS?", so please read it charitably and avoid being pedantic about this sort of thing.
- thrill 11mo ago
  Legal matters are all about pedantry.
andreybaskov 11mo ago
Interesting. Amazon ToS actually has a section about agents - https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GLSBYFE9MGKKQXXM https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=... And they even provide a definition of what an Agent is: "Agent” means any software or service that takes autonomous or semi-autonomous action on behalf of, or at the instruction of, any person or entity. Though to me it raises even more questions. What is a software that takes "autonomous" action on my behalf. Is curl "autonomous"?
- afandian 11mo ago
  > Is curl "autonomous"? Only when you supply -L
- paxys 11mo ago
  "autonomous or semi-autonomous" is the key phrase. If you manually invoke a curl command then no, it isn't an agent. If you write code that itself determines when and how to invoke that command then it is.
  - anon84873628 11mo ago
    Am I not manually instructing the agent to buy a certain product? What if I set up a cron job to buy a certain product every month - is that not autonomous? What if it is first querying my live toilet paper sticks to make the decision?
    - andreybaskov 11mo ago
      Exactly. It's software - `curl` or LLM. It's a function that accepts input and produces output. One is much more sophisticated that the other, but it's made out of the same machine instructions, there is no magic. What's the criteria that makes one function "autonomous" and the other one "manual"? I feel it really boils down to this.

whatever1 11mo ago

No. That is why you have personal credentials to log in to Amazon. If you want to have delegating capabilities you can open an Amazon business account.

kelnos 11mo ago
Would Amazon be ok with me opening a business account, creating credentials for a Perplexity assistant, and having it buy products? Based on this article, I'd think not?
- whatever1 11mo ago
  Even if it was not AI it would not be allowed. You are effectively creating dummy accounts with bots. Even the SEC would be against it, as it would inflate the user base of Amazon.
andreybaskov 11mo ago
Me and my wife share the same Amazon account. Should I open a business account to do grocery shopping?
- yalok 11mo ago
  Amazon support family sharing for the same home address - 2 adults and 4 children I think can share the same Prime My wife and I used to share 1 account, but then I wanted to buy her a gift that had to be a surprise - so had to create a new account and add it as part of the family to the original one…. Then kids grew up and wanted to make small orders themselves, and I didn’t want them to see our order history…
  - andreybaskov 11mo ago
    I know its there. But we _prefer_ to have a single account to simplify tracking and picking up packages. I'm curious if from their point of view (or their ToS) I'm even allowed to share my credentials with anyone else. 1Password shared vaults are there for a reason - people share credentials all the time, business or personal.

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

> where do we draw the line? Perplexify has shown itself to be a bad actor [1][2][3], and possibly incompetent, too [4]. We need to draw a line, eventually. But it’s far from urgent. And I don’t think Perplexity should be the one deciding. [1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-unde... [2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses-bid-dismiss-or-transfer-news-corp-copyright-case-2025-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/perplexity-ai-loses... [3] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/reddit-sues-to-block-perplexity-from-scraping-google-search-results/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/reddit-sues-to-b... [4] https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/ https://brave.com/blog/comet-prompt-injection/