OMI Urges FTC to Crack Down on Surveillance Pricing as AI Gives Corporations New Tools to Exploit Consumers

In comments to the FTC, Open Markets warns that disclosure alone cannot protect consumers from personalized pricing and calls for a comprehensive federal ban.

The Open Markets Institute urged the Federal Trade Commission to take stronger action against surveillance pricing, warning that artificial intelligence and concentrated corporate power are giving businesses unprecedented opportunities to charge consumers higher prices based on their personal information, circumstances, and lack of alternatives.

In comments submitted to the FTC, Open Markets welcomed the Commission’s proposed policy requiring businesses to disclose when they use personal information to set individualized prices. But we warn that disclosure alone does little to protect consumers when dominant companies can exploit their knowledge of customers who have nowhere else to turn.

A grocery retailer could charge more to someone who lives far from competing stores. A rideshare company could raise prices for a customer who urgently needs transportation. An airline could use personal information to identify travelers willing to pay more because of a family emergency.

“Americans should not have to hide the circumstances of their lives to receive a fair price,” Open Markets wrote. “Nor should corporations be free to turn knowledge of those circumstances into power over the people who depend on them.”

The comments highlight how surveillance pricing can reinforce monopoly power. Dominant retailers and digital platforms possess enormous amounts of consumer data, allowing them to identify customers with few alternatives while selectively offering lower prices to those considering competitors. Smaller businesses without comparable data may struggle to compete, while individualized prices make it harder for consumers and regulators to detect abuses.

AI is making these practices more sophisticated and easier to deploy. The FTC has already documented an industry of intermediaries offering personalized pricing services to retailers. A December 2025 investigation by Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative, and More Perfect Union found that Instacart displayed different prices for identical groceries purchased from the same store at the same time, with some prices varying by as much as 23 percent. Instacart subsequently discontinued the program.

Open Markets also warned that emerging AI shopping agents could introduce new risks. Companies operating these agents may gain detailed knowledge of consumers’ budgets, preferences, purchasing histories, and immediate needs—information that could ultimately be shared with sellers or used to determine how much consumers are willing to pay.

The organization urged the FTC to take five steps:

• Adopt the proposed disclosure requirements while making clear that disclosure does not shield otherwise unlawful surveillance pricing.

• Investigate surveillance pricing as a potential unfair method of competition, particularly when dominant firms use their data advantages to exploit consumers or disadvantage rivals.

• Scrutinize AI pricing systems, data brokers, and shopping agents, including how they obtain and use consumers’ personal information.

• Distinguish surveillance pricing from ordinary discounts, preserving businesses’ ability to offer broadly available sales and transparent promotions.

• Recommend that Congress prohibit surveillance-based personalized pricing outright, including practices carried out through third-party intermediaries and AI systems.

The comments argue that the FTC should draw on a longstanding principle of American antimonopoly policy: corporations controlling essential channels of commerce should not be free to impose arbitrary or discriminatory terms on the people who depend on them.

“Transparency is not an adequate response to the power surveillance pricing gives corporations over their customers,” Open Markets wrote.

Also see:

Sally Hubbard, Who Do AI Agents Work For?, Open Markets Institute (June 2, 2026)

Open Markets Institute, et al. Prohibiting Surveillance Prices and Wages (February 2025)

Open Markets Institute, Creating Fair Food Markets for Affordable Groceries, (November 24, 2025)

Claire Kelloway, Personalization or Price Discrimination?, Open Markets Institute (January 30, 2020)

Barry C. Lynn, Liberty from All Masters: The New American Autocracy vs. the Will of the People, (St. Martin’s Press, 2020)