American shoppers have learned to live with prices that move. A plane ticket costs more on Friday than it did on Tuesday, a hotel room spikes during a big weekend, and a rideshare fare climbs when it rains. What shoppers are now pushing back on, according to reporting by the Associated Press, is the arrival of that same logic — powered by artificial intelligence and digital shelf tags — in the everyday aisles where they buy milk, eggs and cereal.
The Associated Press reported that U.S. consumers aren’t just frustrated with high prices; they’re angry and confused about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting those prices. Digital price tags are rapidly replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. And terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are stirring anxiety on social media, where users wonder if different people are getting different prices for the same product.
The prospect of everyday spending shaped by algorithms shoppers don’t understand, and personal data they may not realize they’re sharing, has touched a nerve, the AP said. “There are major tensions happening right now between who’s really going to have the power with some of these algorithms and usage of bots and AI: the companies or the shopper,” Katie Thomas, who leads an internal consumer behavior think tank at the management consulting firm Kearney, told the Associated Press.
What’s changing in the aisle
The most visible change is the tag itself. Digital price labels — small electronic displays that let stores update shelf prices electronically instead of sending workers down the aisle to swap paper tags — have long been used in Europe and Asia, the AP noted, and are now drawing more attention as they spread to major U.S. retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods. Consumer advocates have argued that digital labels could eventually be used for surge pricing or personalized pricing, and labor unions have also opposed the technology, according to the Associated Press.
Retailers using the technology say some of the concern stems from misconceptions about how their pricing tools work. The Associated Press reported that Walmart CEO John Furner said in a blog post last month that digital price tags save workers’ time and keep prices up to date, and that the labels aren’t used to raise prices based on the weather, time of day or individual shopper. “We price the product, not the person,” Furner wrote, in remarks quoted by the AP.
The labels make frequent changes easier, but that does not necessarily mean higher prices during periods of strong demand. The AP reported that retailers typically update electronic shelf prices on a regular schedule, often weekly, because shoppers value consistency, according to Asa Farquhar of Relex Solutions, a retail technology company. Researchers who tracked prices at an unnamed grocery chain found “virtually no surge pricing” after the labels were introduced, the AP said. “Changing prices throughout the day, the way airlines or rideshare apps do, is exceedingly rare in grocery and general merchandise today,” Farquhar told the Associated Press.
Why shoppers are uneasy
Part of the unease, the AP reported, is that companies aren’t always transparent about the customer data they collect and how it’s used, which has made consumers suspicious and led to speculation. As one example, the Associated Press noted that social media posts falsely imply that electronic shelf labels Walmart plans to put in all its U.S. stores scan shoppers’ faces or cellphones to set individualized prices, according to Thomas.
The deeper worry is harder to dismiss: shoppers cannot easily tell, from the outside, whether a price they see is the same price everyone else sees. The AP pointed to an investigation last year by Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative and More Perfect Union that found shoppers on Instacart were shown different prices for identical products at the same stores. Instacart subsequently ended what it described as tests that randomly assigned shoppers to groups rather than setting prices based on their personal information, the Associated Press reported — a distinction that matters legally and ethically, but one that is invisible to a shopper staring at two different prices for the same carton of eggs.
Dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing, explained plainly
The two terms driving the debate describe different things, and the AP’s explainer drew the line clearly. Dynamic pricing means adjusting prices in response to changing market conditions, including supply and demand. An airline that adjusts ticket prices as a departure approaches is using dynamic pricing; Uber’s practice of lifting fares when demand outstrips the supply of available drivers, such as during rush hour, is a type of dynamic pricing known as surge pricing, the Associated Press explained. Dynamic pricing moves a price for everyone at once, based on conditions — not on who you are.
Personalized pricing is different. It means offering customers different prices and discounts based on their locations, incomes, web-browsing habits and other information about individuals or groups of shoppers, the AP said. Some advocacy groups and regulators use the term “surveillance pricing” for the same practice. How widely businesses actually use personal information to customize prices is unclear, the Associated Press reported: an FTC staff report released in January 2025 found that intermediaries offering tools that can tailor prices and promotions worked with at least 250 clients, including grocery and clothing retailers.
Algorithmic pricing sits underneath both. It uses software to recommend or automatically set prices — something companies have used for decades — and AI can help that software identify patterns in sales, competitors’ prices and other information to predict demand and estimate how different prices would affect sales and profits, according to the AP. Those tools can support both dynamic and personalized pricing, which is why a debate about a shelf tag quickly becomes a debate about data.
Nor does dynamic pricing only push prices up. The Associated Press reported that Decodo, a web data company, tracked price changes in 2025 across products ranging from electronics to clothing and home improvement supplies, and that about half the U.S. changes it recorded were decreases — contrary to consumers’ assumptions that dynamic pricing only raises prices, according to Gabriele Vitke, a senior product marketing manager at the company, as quoted by the AP.
What regulators and retailers say
Lawmakers and regulators are taking action, the Associated Press reported. Legislators in at least 30 states have considered pricing bills this year, including measures addressing algorithmic and personalized pricing, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as cited by the AP. Lawmakers in Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut recently enacted restrictions on using shoppers’ personal data to determine what they pay, the AP said; the Maryland and New Jersey laws focus on groceries, with exceptions for certain loyalty discounts and other promotional offers, while Connecticut’s legislation covers a broader range of retail purchases.
At the federal level, the Federal Trade Commission has proposed an enforcement policy warning businesses that failing to disclose their use of personal data to set individualized prices could violate consumer protection law, the Associated Press reported. JD Supra, summarizing a King & Spalding analysis of that proposal, reported that the FTC published the proposed Enforcement Policy Statement on August 19, 2026, for public comment, and that it focuses on personalized pricing that occurs where consumers reasonably expect prices will not vary based on their personal data. According to the JD Supra summary, failure to adequately disclose such pricing could constitute a deceptive or unfair practice in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the FTC said it plans to enforce against such practices “aggressively.” JD Supra also reported that FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson stated the draft statement “would put businesses engaged in or considering personalized pricing on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will not hesitate to enforce the law in this space.”
The JD Supra analysis added useful specifics the AP summary did not spell out: the proposed FTC statement identifies three disclosures businesses should provide — that the price is personalized, the basis for the personalization, and the types of data it is based on, such as purchase history, browsing behavior or geographic location — and directs that those disclosures be “clear and conspicuous” at or before the point of purchase, rather than buried in lengthy terms of service or privacy policies.
Retailers, for their part, frame the tools as a modern version of an old practice. The National Retail Federation, which represents big and small stores, told the Associated Press that algorithmic pricing is a new method of doing what retailers have always done: monitor and adjust prices depending on supply, demand, seasonality, competitors’ prices and other factors. That framing is unlikely to settle the argument. As the AP’s reporting makes clear, the fight is not really about whether a price can change — shoppers accepted that on planes and in apps long ago. It is about whether the price on the shelf is a public fact, the same for the person standing next to you, or a private calculation you are not allowed to see. On that question, the shoppers, the states and now the FTC are all demanding an answer.
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