Instacart Drops AI Pricing Experiments Following Regulatory Pressure
Instacart is ending its AI-driven pricing trials after reports revealed that identical grocery items were sold at varying costs to different shoppers. The decision mandates that every customer browsing the same store location at the same time will now see uniform pricing, effectively eliminating the platform's controversial personalized price testing.
The policy shift follows a collaborative investigation by Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union, which exposed that the platform displayed multiple price points for the same goods. The findings prompted immediate scrutiny from lawmakers, including Senator Chuck Schumer, who urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the lack of transparency in these pricing experiments. Reuters subsequently confirmed that the FTC launched an inquiry into these practices.
Instacart will phase out the use of Eversight—an AI technology acquired in 2022—for testing price fluctuations. While the company maintains that these tests were never tied to individual shopping habits, personal demographics, or supply-demand metrics, it acknowledged that the strategy failed to meet customer expectations. This retreat occurs alongside a separate $60 million settlement regarding deceptive advertising practices, marking a difficult period of regulatory and public pushback for the grocery delivery giant.
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