The Federal Trade Commission is launching an investigation into so-called \u201csurveillance pricing,\u201d seeking more information about how artificial intelligence is used to change pricing rapidly based on data about customer behavior and characteristics.<\/p>\n
The FTC says the practice allows companies to charge different customers, different prices.<\/p>\n
The agency is serving eight companies with a mandatory request for information \u2014 all companies it says that advertise their AI and other tech tools along with a trove of customer information to target prices to individual customers.<\/p>\n
The list includes\u00a0Mastercard,\u00a0JPMorgan Chase,\u00a0Accenture\u00a0and consulting giant McKinsey. It also includes software firm Task, which counts\u00a0McDonald\u2019s\u00a0and\u00a0Starbucks\u00a0as clients; Revionics, which works with\u00a0Home Depot,\u00a0Tractor Supply\u00a0and grocery chain Hannaford; Bloomreach, which services FreshDirect, Total Wine and Puma; and Pros, which was named Microsoft\u2019s internet service vendor of the year this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirms that harvest Americans\u2019 personal data can put people\u2019s privacy at risk,\u201d FTC Chair Lina Khan said in\u00a0a news release. \u201cNow firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kahn describes surveillance pricing as a \u201cshadowy ecosystem of pricing middlemen.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FTC is demanding information about the types of products and services offered; how the companies collect consumer data; who their customers are; how the clients are using this product or service; and what impact it has on consumer pricing.<\/p>\n
The agency\u2019s undertaking the action under its 6(b) authority, which authorizes it to collect information for study without a specific law enforcement action.<\/p>\n
CNBC has reached out to the companies included in the FTC\u2019s requests.<\/p>\n
Mastercard said in a statement, \u201cWe will cooperate with the FTC in this process.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Federal Trade Commission is launching an investigation into so-called \u201csurveillance pricing,\u201d seeking more information about how artificial intelligence is used to change pricing rapidly based on data about customer behavior and characteristics. The FTC says the practice allows companies to charge different customers, different prices. The agency is serving eight companies with a mandatory […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}