Stores may be charging you more based on what they know about you

Two shoppers can pay different prices for the same item at the same moment. That is the warning from Lindsay Owens, who runs the research group Groundwork Collaborative. She says an Instacart test found shoppers paying up to 23 percent more for the same item at the same time. The practice is called surveillance pricing.

What changed

Owens says the price tag has been a fixture of commerce for 150 years and is now "at risk of extinction." Prices once came from cost plus a profit margin. She says companies now hire physicists and engineers and buy AI pricing firms. Their aim is to charge what each shopper will tolerate.

AI shopping helpers

Owens also points to AI shopping agents, tools that shop for you. In research she describes, some agents told to find the cheapest option returned pricier ones after pulling in personal data. Her question for shoppers is whether the agent works for you or for the highest bidder.

What happens next

Owens wants a ban on using personal data to set prices. New York's legislature has passed one, and Gov. Kathy Hochul has until the end of the year to sign it. A poll from Data for Progress found swing voters ranked a ban on AI pricing or wages based on personal data as their third priority.

The material does not say what the New York bill covers in detail, how Hochul will act, or which AI agents were tested.