Google publicly rebutted claims by the Groundwork Collaborative that its new Universal Commerce Protocol for AI shopping agents enables “surveillance pricing” to overcharge consumers based on chat data.
Executive Director Lindsay Owens warned that the system’s “upselling” features allowed for predatory personalization.
On a post on X, she wrote across several replies:
“Big/bad news for consumers. Google is out today with an announcement of how they plan to integrate shopping into their AI offerings including search and Gemini. The plan includes ‘personalized upselling.' I.e. Analyzing your chat data and using it to overcharge you. They’ll be working with some of the biggest names in retail to swap data & train their algorithm into a price gouging behemoth. Companies like Lowe’s, Michael’s, and Reebok have already signed on to the pilot. Fasten your seatbelts for the next phase of surveillance pricing.”
On a different thread, she went on to say:
“Google’s building an NSA for capitalism. By merging search history, conversational AI, and retailer data, their new ‘Universal Commerce Protocol' could create the ultimate surveillance pricing squeeze. But instead of national security, the goal is extracting ‘maximum lifetime value' from you, the consumer.”
She then went on to outline what she considers to be the company's master plan in an multi-part post.
In summary:
- Step 1: Profile you via access to your purchase history with retailers.
- Step 2: Pull the wool over your eyes with one general consent button for the retailer to share its information about you with them.
- Step 3: Get you to hand over the keys by embedding consent for the sale of your data directly into checkout.
- Step 4: Personalize your offer and price hikes through the use of your data and purchase history.
- Step 5: Desensitize you to price via its new ‘direct offers' that's being built directly into Google Ads.
- Step 6: Bring in reinforcements, encouraging you to speak with Google-powered chatbots that allow it to harvest more data.
Wow, shots fired!
In a post on X, Google responded:
“These claims around pricing are inaccurate. We strictly prohibit merchants from showing prices on Google that are higher than what is reflected on their site, period. 1/ The term ‘upselling' is not about overcharging. It’s a standard way for retailers to show additional premium product options that people might be interested in. The choice is always with the user on what to buy. 2/ ‘Direct Offers' is a pilot that enables merchants to offer a *lower* priced deal or add extra services like free shipping — it cannot be used to raise prices.”
A Google spokesperson later told TechCrunch that its permissions are not about hiding what the user is agreeing to, but consolidating actions (get, create, update, delete, cancel, complete) instead of making a user agree to each one separately — which is nothing new. Most of us click “Accept” to existing TOS without reading anyway.
