Alfred Ng

My name's Alfred Ng.

I'm a tech policy reporter for Politico.

So the probe was released in the final days of the Biden administration in January, just a couple of days before, you know, President Trump had taken over.

A new report this year from the Federal Trade Commission confirmed something known as surveillance pricing.

It was very much surprising.

released as, you know, kind of preliminary findings from, you know, a study that they opened up in, I think, July of 2024.

So it wasn't a completed study.

And the premise was, you know, we hope that the next administration will continue this study.

That didn't end up happening.

The study was actually ended under the new FTC chair, Andrew Ferguson, in January.

Yeah, they had found from the report that a lot of these companies that were contracted with a lot of retailers were making these promises, right, of we can use AI to basically set different prices for people.

They didn't exactly use the term pain points, but that is a term that's been, you know,

going around a lot with relations to surveillance pricing where it's basically what is the most someone is willing to pay for this certain product or something like that and basically saying we can, you know, set these prices this way so that your company can earn more money.

So most of what we know about use of this usually comes from the companies themselves, right?

There's no federal requirement to say like, you know, hey, you have to tell us if your company is using this algorithm to set individual prices for people.

But, you know, Delta Airlines, for example, you know, people learned about them using dynamic pricing.

And I'm saying this air quotes through like their earnings calls, right, where they're telling investors, here are some ways we can see ourselves making more profit here by, you know, setting different prices.

And they've basically said we don't use personalized data for people to set these prices.

And I think that's why, you know, people use terms like dynamic pricing or individualized pricing as opposed to what the FTC called it, which is surveillance pricing.

You're right.