Instacart announced it will stop letting grocery stores use artificial intelligence software to show different price tags to different customers for identical products, reported CBS News.
The move comes after Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative, a consumer advocacy group, published findings showing that major grocery chains had been testing the technology on shoppers without their knowledge.
Stores including Kroger, Albertsons, Costco, Safeway, and Sprouts Farmers Market participated in the tests. In one example, Wheat Thins crackers at a Seattle Safeway showed price swings of up to 23% depending on who was shopping.
This is good news for anyone who buys groceries online. When companies quietly test pricing strategies that could raise your bill based on algorithmic decisions, transparency becomes a real concern. Shoppers deserve to know they're getting fair, consistent pricing, and this decision puts that power back in consumers' hands.
The growing use of AI tools across industries raises questions about energy consumption, too.
Data centers powering these systems require massive amounts of electricity and water for cooling. AI can help optimize clean energy grids and reduce waste in some scenarios, but tools designed to maximize retail profits don't offer those same benefits to the planet.
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As AI becomes more common in everyday transactions, it's worth asking which uses actually serve people and the environment.
Instacart bought the pricing software company Eversight in 2022 and rolled out the technology to grocery chains the following year. The company said it made this decision based on customer feedback and noted that stores will still control their own pricing on the platform.
The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly been looking into the practice. In a public statement, the agency called itself "disturbed by what we have read in the press about Instacart's alleged pricing practices."
"Once we pulled back the curtain on Instacart's hidden pricing experiments, the company had no choice but to close the lab," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative.
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