After Delta Air Lines faced public backlash for expanding its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to set fares for passengers, the airline sent a letter to federal lawmakers on Friday denying that it uses “personalized pricing” to price-gouge consumers.

But many airlines, led by Delta, the nation’s largest, are working with AI consulting companies that boast of their “hyper-personalized” price setting. This new airfare apparatus is part of the airline industry’s long-standing experiments with Big Data-driven pricing strategies that have laid the groundwork for economy-wide surveillance pricing that exploits consumers’ privacy to deliver “personalized” prices.

Now, through shared algorithms, airlines’ AI ventures could also lead to illegal collusion that threatens to jack up ticket prices

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