According to Fortune, a study conducted in September by Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative used roughly 200 volunteers to check prices on 20 specific items across four cities. The volunteers simultaneously selected identical products from the same stores, discovering price differences in approximately 75% of the items. Major retailers like Costco, Kroger, Safeway, and Target were included in the investigation. The practice is being called “smart rounding,” a form of dynamic pricing that has proliferated with AI. This comes as Instacart deepens its AI investment, recently announcing a partnership with OpenAI to let users shop for recipe ingredients directly within ChatGPT.
How “smart rounding” actually works
So, what is this “smart rounding” thing? Basically, it’s not about rounding pennies up or down randomly. It’s an algorithmic, dynamic pricing strategy where an AI system adjusts the final price a customer sees—often upward—based on a bunch of hidden factors. Think about your location, the time of day, the store’s popularity, and even your own shopping history. The AI’s goal is to maximize profit on each transaction by finding the highest price you’re probably willing to pay without noticing or caring. It’s surge pricing, but for your broccoli and bread. And here’s the thing: because it’s powered by complex machine learning models, the changes can be subtle and constantly shifting, making it incredibly hard for shoppers to spot or track.
The AI grocery future is already here
Instacart‘s new partnership with OpenAI is a perfect example of this dual reality. On one hand, they’re rolling out super convenient features, like letting you ask ChatGPT for a chicken parmesan recipe and then instantly carting all the ingredients. Sounds magical, right? But that seamless, integrated shopping experience also feeds more data into the pricing machine. It creates a closed loop where you’re not comparing prices elsewhere; you’re just clicking “buy” from within the chat. The convenience is the product, but the real revenue engine might be the AI tweaking prices in the background. It’s a classic tech trade-off: we get ease, they get more control and margin.
What can you actually do about it?
Look, this isn’t going away. Dynamic pricing is now standard for rideshares, airline tickets, and hotels. Groceries were arguably the last frontier. So what’s a shopper to do? The old-school advice still applies, but it’s more work. If you’re using a delivery app, try checking the price of the same item at a different virtual store, or even pull up the physical store’s own website or app for a price check. Be skeptical of “convenience” fees that aren’t just delivery or service fees. And maybe ask yourself: is saving the trip to the store worth potentially paying 10-15% more on your entire cart? Sometimes, yes. Often? Probably not. The real challenge is that fighting AI-powered pricing requires a level of vigilance that most people, frankly, don’t have time for.
