FTC Targets Shady A.I. Price Gouging Scheme

The Federal Trade Commission announced last week that they are going to conduct a study of corporations using “surveillance pricing” to gouge consumers based on their location, search histories, and all other forms of personal data. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The Federal Trade Commission announced last week that they're gonna conduct a study of corporations using surveillance pricing to gouge consumers based on their location, their search of histories. How much money does that person have? Can we get more money from that person than this person? We've done a couple stories on this. This is outrageous. It is that we're gonna know so much about you. We're gonna know, what do you watch on television? Where do you buy your clothes? Where do you shop? What are the big purchases that you've made? Have you made purchases that their AI system says, wow, he's really willing to pay more money than what it's worth. Right?

Yeah. And finally, after all of these reports, Federal Trade Commission says last week, okay, we're gonna look into this, but we're not really gonna look into it as much as you would think we are. What we're gonna do, we're gonna commission a study and of course, that is what it always is. We're not actually launching an investigation. We are reaching out to all the corporations that are doing this and asking them, well, how are you doing it? Is this okay for you to be doing? Give us your answers corporations so that we can then go to the public and say everything's okay.

They're already doing it. Go online today. Okay. Put in information that might, well, a lot of it has to do with zip code. Where are you doing it? What is the computer? What kind of computer are you using even? If it's an old beat up computer, they're gonna know that, well, they probably don't have a lot of money. But you can actually put in the fact that you're looking for an airplane ticket, for example. You could put it in one computer in a pricey zip code with maybe material with somebody that really might have plenty of money to spend. And then see what that price does compared to comparing the price in another zip code. This is not being done for anything except greed. This is being done so corporations can squeeze every dime. They're already teaching these concepts in MBA school. They're already talking about, this is the new thing. This whole pricing scam to where we can squeeze, we can find out how far can we push this person. And when they push you, one time, that information goes out there and everybody says, oh, it's like vultures. He did it one time. Probably, he's gonna do it with us too.

Yeah. Because the FTC has already identified MasterCard, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Co, Accenture, Pros Holdings, Revionics, Bloomreach, Task Software, those are all the groups engaging in this right now using AI to figure out who's willing to pay more. Who can we overcharge? Who can't pay it? And again, like you said, it all goes back to greed. There is is no business reason to do this other than if we can squeeze a couple more bucks out of these people, we're gonna do it because we can.

Corporate America is horrified that it's called, surveillance pricing. They want it to be called personalized pricing because it sounds more humane.

It does. I mean, look, this is your personal price. And people think, wow. So I'm getting a price nobody else is getting.

They're thinking about me. Right. Wow. There is no bottom, there is absolutely no bottom.