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McDonald’s faces class action over AI menu price-fixing claims
The proposed nationwide case was filed in federal court in Chicago on Oct. 2, and it alleges the company coordinated prices across franchises and company-owned restaurants using an AI pricing system.
McDonald’s has been sued in federal court in Chicago in a proposed nationwide class action alleging it unlawfully coordinated menu prices across franchises and company-owned restaurants using an AI-powered pricing system, according to Insurance Journal.
The lawsuit, filed on Oct. 2, claims McDonald’s violated US antitrust law by conspiring with independent franchisees to fix prices through algorithms trained on nonpublic data.
Insurance Journal notes that Reuters previously reported McDonald’s pricing engine uses machine-learning algorithms to analyze data from millions of daily transactions across nearly 14,000 restaurants.
McDonald’s denied the allegations, saying in a statement that AI does not set the price of menu items such as a Big Mac and that franchisees make their own pricing decisions, while pricing recommendation tools and analytics are used across industries.