AI is watching your spending and setting your prices accordingly. Lawmakers want to stop it

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Set us as preferred In 2025, a New York resident filed a lawsuit against JetBlue Airlines.The lawsuit included a screenshot of a tweet from X.In it, a user complained to JetBlue that they were trying to “make it to a funeral” but that flight prices had risen $230 in just one day.

A JetBlue representative replied to the tweet, recommending that the customer clear their browser history and try again.The assumption, the lawsuit alleged, was that JetBlue was using customers’ personal data — anything from income to recent search history — to set prices, based on factors like their wealth, frugal or profligate spending habits, signs they might have a desperate need for the ticket.The practice is commonly called surveillance pricing or personalized pricing.

JetBlue denied that they used it.Lawmakers and regulators, both at the state and federal levels, have taken note.Amid a growing concern over how corporations set their prices, California lawmakers are debating a bill that would ban surveillance pricing.But while some pricing experts are cheering on these bans, others think lawmakers are too quick to restrict a practice they say could actually lead to lower prices for consumers.The backers of Assembly Bill 2564 were enthusiastic about its chances for passage, though the legislative year will come to an end Monday at midnight.

The Assembly approved a version of the bill in May, and the state Senate was set to consider it Sunday.If passed, as backers hoped, it would return to the Assembly with still a full day for another vote.Personalized pricing has been going on for centuries.

For thousands of years, a seller at a market might have used visual and social cues — what a customer was wearing, what the seller knew about their family — to quote a price.“The seller sized you up and thought you were wearing a really n...