Why Americans Suspect AI Is Making Their Grocery and Shopping Bills More Expensive

Nick Nadeau, a 38-year-old product manager in Belleville, Illinois, opened the Walmart app and saw a hard drive listed at $369. His wife opened the same app on her phone, where the same drive cost $110 less. He bought it at her price, and he said the experience felt invasive. A Walmart spokeswoman said the difference came from an error that has since been corrected, not from any use of personal information to set his price. That answer has not calmed much, because a lot of shoppers now assume software is sizing them up before it quotes a number. Walmart’s chief executive put the company’s position in writing on September 25, 2026.

This article was created with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team for accuracy and clarity.

Walmart’s CEO answers in a letter to customers

On September 25, 2026, Walmart president and chief executive John Furner published an open letter to customers built around one line: “We price the product, not the person.” Prices still move when the cost of goods or transportation moves, he wrote, but income, shopping history, urgency or other personal information will not change the number. The letter made three commitments, and one of them covers Sparky, Walmart’s AI shopping assistant, which Furner said will not use what customers share to raise prices or hide cheaper options that fit their needs. The same letter put Walmart’s digital shelf label rollout at roughly 2,300 stores. Ten days later, Walmart sent a second letter, this one addressed to a single critic by name.

Patents become the center of the Walmart pricing fight

The recipient was Lindsay Owens, who leads the Groundwork Collaborative, which published a report on Walmart’s patents in early October 2026. Written by Owens and Elizabeth Pancotti, it points to filings describing systems that could price around what is already in a cart, follow a shopper’s daily routine using GPS and camera data, or run experiments to find what a person will pay. Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, replied that Owens leaves a false impression of how the company prices, and that a patent describes an invention rather than a practice in use. He also rejected the report’s example of tuna in a cart raising the price of mayonnaise. Most of this fight, though, is being waged over a plastic tag on the shelf edge.

What a digital shelf tag actually changes

Walmart announced its switch to digital shelf labels in June 2024, saying the tags would spare store workers from changing paper price cards by hand. A digital tag changes the price for everyone standing in the aisle, which is close to the opposite of a price built for one person. Walmart says it usually changes the tags while stores are closed, so nobody watches a number move in the middle of a shopping trip. The objection from critics is not what the tag does today but what it could be connected to later. New Jersey wrote that objection into law on July 23, 2026.

Three states restricted surveillance pricing in 2026

New Jersey’s Fair Price Protection Act makes it unlawful under the state Consumer Fraud Act for a retail food store or grocery delivery platform to vary prices using personal data such as browsing history, real-time location or inferred income. It separately bars electronic shelf labels connected to that kind of pricing, and it exposes covered retailers to private and class action claims. Maryland’s Protection From Predatory Pricing Act, signed April 28, 2026, was the first surveillance pricing restriction to become law, taking effect October 1, 2026 for food retailers and delivery platforms. Connecticut’s law took effect the same day and applies to retailers more broadly. In two states, the dispute now shows up as a sentence printed with the price.

The exact words some states now require on prices

New York went first, in 2025, becoming the first state to require businesses to disclose when they used personalized algorithmic pricing rather than banning it. A business that sets a price using a New York shopper’s personal data has to display, with the price, the statement “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.” Connecticut requires its own label, telling shoppers a price setting device used their personal data to increase the price. Colorado went the other way. Governor Jared Polis vetoed a bill in 2026 that would have banned using personal data to set individual prices or wages, saying its broad sweep would punish lower prices as well as higher ones. Federal regulators took their own step on August 19, 2026, by a 2-0 vote.

Federal regulators propose rules for personalized prices

The Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed enforcement policy statement on personalized pricing on August 19, 2026, defined as using personal data to set prices according to what a company believes someone will spend. The vote was 2-0. Where shoppers reasonably expect prices not to vary with their data, businesses would have to clearly disclose that a price is personalized, the basis for it, and the types of data used. It is not a ban, and the statement itself says Congress has not given the agency authority to prohibit personalized pricing in all circumstances. The comment period closed on September 18, 2026. One McDonald’s customer in Illinois was not waiting for a federal rule.

A customer sues McDonald’s over its AI pricing tool

Michael Thomas, an Illinois resident, filed a proposed nationwide class action against McDonald’s in federal court in Chicago in October 2026, alleging the company conspired with franchisees to fix menu prices through an AI-powered pricing system. The suit claims the tool draws on franchisees’ confidential sales data and suggests raising an item’s price once at least 30 percent of stores have already raised it. McDonald’s called the lawsuit “filled with inaccuracies” and said it would defend itself. It also said AI does not set the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item. Franchisees own and operate 95 percent of its 14,000 US restaurants. None of this is new in travel, where prices have moved by the hour for decades.

Why an old pricing practice became a new fight

Airlines, hotels and ride-hailing apps have adjusted prices by demand and time of day for years, and retailers have always moved prices as costs move. Loyalty programs already give different discounts to different shoppers, and student or senior pricing is the same idea with a simpler rule. What changed, says Jameson Spivack of the Future of Privacy Forum, is that companies hold far more data about individuals and have faster tools for changing prices online and in stores. Shoppers are also quicker to suspect the worst, with overall consumer prices up by roughly 29 percent over six years. Two of the new state laws stop at the grocery aisle.

What to check while the rules are unsettled

The Maryland and New Jersey bans are aimed at groceries and delivery, while Connecticut’s applies to retailers generally, so a laptop or a plane ticket often sits outside them. The FTC statement is a proposal, not a final rule, the McDonald’s case is at the complaint stage, and Walmart’s pledges are commitments rather than regulation. More than 50 surveillance pricing bills were pending across 26 states in 2026. Until those settle, the practical check is the one Nadeau stumbled into: open the same listing signed out, or on a second device, and compare before you buy. In New York and Connecticut, there is a second thing to look for, the required line saying a price was set or raised using your personal data.