A new investigation has revealed that grocery delivery service Instacart is using a covert, AI-powered dynamic pricing scheme to charge customers different prices for the same items — potentially costing households over $1,000 more a year.

Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports, and More Perfect Union collaborated on an experiment with 437 shoppers across four U.S. locations, representing several different markets: Seattle, Washington, D.C., North Canton, Ohio, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. For the experiment, shoppers chose the “pickup” rather than “delivery” option.

The average difference between prices on items with changing costs was 13 percent, while some items varied up to 23 percent in their price tags.

Using simultaneous tests on the Instacart app, the investigation found

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