Grocery Stores Accused Of Using AI For Illegal Price Gouging. 'What They're Doing Here Is Illegal." [View all]

Off the Front Page by Ivana Cesnik
December 13, 2025
4 min.read

A months-long investigation by More Perfect Union, Consumer Reports, and Groundwork Collaborative found that major grocery retailers and tech companies are using artificial intelligence to quietly charge different shoppers different prices for the same items, both online and possibly in-store.

The report centers on Instacart, which provides the back-end technology for online grocery shopping across dozens of major retailers.

To test the theory, the research team recruited more than 400 volunteers. Each person placed the same 20-item order on Instacart from the same grocery store at the same time. Every participant selected either pickup or used the same delivery address to control for location-based differences.
Despite identical conditions, users reported price totals that varied by as much as $10.

“We’re in the same room, the same address ordering, and we still had different prices,” one test participant said.

Katie Wells, a lead researcher with Groundwork Collaborative, found that nearly three out of every four products had different prices. In one example, the price of eggs ranged from $4.28 to $4.69 at the same store, at the same moment.

Much More here
https://offthefrontpage.com/grocery-stores-accused-of-using-ai-for-illegal-price-gouging/