McDonald's Accused of Using AI to Keep High Prices for Thousands of Restaurants
«To squeeze every penny out of customers down to the last french fry».
A class-action lawsuit has been filed against McDonald's in the USA. The company is accused of illegally coordinating prices in nearly 14,000 restaurants with the help of algorithms.
The lawsuit was filed in a Chicago federal court. As Reuters writes, the plaintiff claims that McDonald's and independent restaurant owners used a unified AI-powered pricing recommendation system, trained on proprietary data about millions of daily purchases.
According to the plaintiffs, this could violate US antitrust laws, as independent businesses are supposed to set their own prices.
McDonald's called the accusations speculative and unfounded.
«Artificial intelligence does not determine the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item,» the company stated. They claim that the final decision rests with the restaurant owners themselves, and analytical tools merely provide them with recommendations.
The plaintiff's lawyer, Lark Turner, believes that McDonald's uses its vast amount of data and its franchising system «to squeeze every penny out of customers down to the last french fry».
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