‘Historic’: Seattle Passes First City Ban on AI-Enabled Surveillance Pricing

Por Olivia Rosane — Common Dreams

Seattle became the first city in the country to ban surveillance pricing on Tuesday afternoon after the City Council voted 7-2 to approve a measure co-sponsored and championed by progressive Mayor Katie Wilson.

The Fair Pricing and Transparency policy bans big retail outlets—both online and brick-and-mortar—from using customer data such as race, gender, employment status, internet or social media history, and conversations with chatbots to charge different shoppers different prices for the same products.

“Food is an essential good that’s getting more expensive all the time,” Wilson said in a statement celebrating the win. “People have been clear: They don’t want their data fed into algorithms that decide how much they pay at the grocery store. Everyone deserves transparent pricing and equal treatment, not hidden systems that charge some shoppers more than others.”

“I don’t think we could do that without the kind of mayor that was elected and the moment that we’re in.”

Surveillance pricing is the practice of feeding shopper data to artificial intelligence, which then sets distinct prices for different customers based on what the AI thinks they can afford. A 2025 investigation from Consumer Reports, Groundwork Collaborative, and More Perfect Union found that the practice could add $1,200 a year to the average Seattle family’s grocery bill.

“This is a huge win for consumers against companies that abuse their personal data to rip them off,” former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said on social media in response to the news.

Seattle just became the first city in America to ban grocery stores from engaging in surveillance pricing.

This is a huge win for consumers against companies that abuse their personal data to rip them off.

Watch former FTC Chair Lina Khan explain. pic.twitter.com/TxAJGFy7H2
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) September 23, 2026

Grace Gedye, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports, said in a statement: “Nobody should pay more for basic necessities because a data broker is quietly collecting information about what they’re searching for online, what they hover over, what their income is, or where they go. The price you see shouldn’t be different based on who you are. Mayor Wilson and the City Council have made Seattle a leader on protecting shoppers from unfair grocery pricing tactics with this bill. We commend this work.”

The Seattle ordinance comes amid an ongoing affordability crisis as grocery prices spike while President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have slashed the budget of crucial federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). At the same time, there is a growing national backlash against AI and Big Tech, with 78% of Americans favoring mandatory regulation of the technology. The ban on surveillance pricing follows a data center moratorium passed by the Seattle City Council in June.

Maya Morales, the founder of WA People’s Privacy and one of the organizers mobilizing grassroots support for the measure, told Common Dreams that harder day-to-day living conditions were leading to a “national shift” in awareness of how Big Tech and Big Retail make life even more difficult, likely enabling a major tech city like Seattle to take a stand against surveillance pricing.

“People are feeling the heat very intensely all over the nation, so in many ways it doesn’t surprise me that this would be the moment that we can get this done, because the harms are so obvious,” she said.

Progressive City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, another co-sponsor of and key advocate for the bill, also emphasized the importance of food security.

“Groceries are getting more expensive for everyday Seattleites, while the buying, selling, and leveraging our private information to manipulate prices is making big national grocery corporations millions in profit,” Rinck said in a statement. “This legislation is intended to put some guardrails on what big businesses can do with our personal information. At a time when SNAP reductions have rocked our community and people have less to spend on food, this is an important step we can take to prevent AI-assisted price gouging and ensure fair discounts for everyone.”

The measure was also co-sponsored by Councilmembers Dionne Foster and Rob Saka and backed by labor and community groups including WA People’s Privacy, Washington Working Families Party, Transit Riders Union, Lavender Rights Project, Queer Power Alliance, Washington Fair Trade Coalition, The Nexus of Privacy, MLK Labor, Consumer Reports, and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 3000.

Grocery workers supported the measure in part because they would be likely to take the brunt of customer complaints if a shopper sees that they are being charged differently than the person next to them at the self checkout. They were also concerned about their own food bills remaining affordable.

“Passing the strongest ban on AI-powered price gouging on groceries feels historic,” Seattle grocery store worker Kristen Wilder said in a statement. “My coworkers and the customers we serve proudly stood together to stop the grocery industry from imposing this scheme here in Seattle. Today that worked paid off for families who just want to know they’re paying a fair price and for workers who want to focus on customer service instead of defending some algorithm making decisions in a black box.”

In addition to fighting food insecurity, Morales emphasized that the measure “takes a little bit of a crack” at the privacy violations enabled by AI and embraced at the federal level as a way of targeting people of color, immigrants, sex workers, low-income and LGBTQ+ people, and other vulnerable groups.

“AI harms are generally privacy and surveillance harms,” Morales said, because “AI needs data in order to work. Mass commercial data surveillance is the reason we have AI and vice versa, and that is an infinite loop.”

However, from a privacy standpoint Morales said there was one disappointing aspect of the bill: an amendment passed to specify that nothing in the law prohibited “technology used solely for security, loss prevention, safety, fraud prevention, fraud detection, or compliance with law.” Morales said this provision was unnecessary because the bill’s language had been very clear that it was focused on pricing. She was also concerned it could open up loopholes, as it is difficult to prove a given technology is only being used for one purpose, and a grocery store might then be able to introduce an invasive surveillance technology—such as shopping baskets that track customers—under the guise of fighting shoplifting.

Because of that amendment, Morales told Common Dreams, “we managed to get a privacy win on pricing but not a privacy win at the grocery store.”

That said, five other corporate “bill-gutting” amendments were voted down, which Morales called a “spectacular win,” and the overall bill was itself an important victory.

Both Morales, and Jon of The Nexus of Privacy, credited the bill’s strength and ability to resist watering down in part to Wilson, who worked with stakeholders including smaller grocery outlets, labor, and community groups to build a coalition and write a strong ordinance from the get-go. Morales noted that Wilson came to office from an organizing background, and that she and Rinck did a good job of bringing grassroots organizations into the process to secure a victory, allowing Seattle policymakers to counter powerful local technology and retail interests.

“I don’t think we could do that without the kind of mayor that was elected and the moment that we’re in,” Morales said.

There is now hope that the bill would have statewide and even national implications. A surveillance pricing ban was introduced into the Washington Legislature in 2026 but failed to advance.

Morales said a legislative win at the local level can show state lawmakers: “This can be done. You don’t have to cave to the Big Retail and Tech lobby, and you can protect people.”

On a national level, Jon of The Nexus of Privacy wrote:

This huge win will help organizers in other cities and states… across the country. Industry had killed a surveillance pricing bill in California just a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve stalled New York’s surveillance pricing bill for months… but guess what, they’re not invincible! And as well as the strong legislation providing… a model of what’s possible, the Seattle coalition’s very successful tactics can hopefully be adapted by organizers elsewhere to reflect the dynamics wherever they are.

As Morales told Common Dreams, “I hope every city will pass something like this.”

Fonte: Common Dreams