The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation that would bar supermarkets from using algorithms to adjust the prices paid by individual shoppers, over the complaints of industry representatives who said the bill could inadvertently block coupons and other discounts.
The measure advanced Monday is a limited bid to block a practice known as surveillance pricing, which sees individual shoppers pay different prices for the same product off the same shelf at the same time. Gov. Mikie Sherrill last week took aim at the practice, pledging to ban it as part of her affordability agenda.
Surveillance pricing drew attention last year after an investigation by Consumer Reports found that grocery delivery service Instacart used an algorithm to charge separate customers different prices for identical products from the same store based on analysis of their personal information.
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