A consumer economics watchdog says Google's new Universal Commerce Protocol is ripe for misuse where consumers could pay more for items. Google denies this.
In the Retail & E-commerce sector, this controversy directly affects trust in AI-powered shopping experiences. If consumers perceive these agents as manipulative or unfair, adoption rates could slow, and retailers who adopt these agents could face reputational damage. Retailers must prioritize transparency and fair pricing strategies to maintain consumer confidence in AI-driven shopping tools.
Businesses implementing AI-driven pricing strategies, like those enabled by Google's protocol, need to prioritize fairness and transparency to avoid consumer backlash and regulatory intervention. This includes implementing mechanisms to audit and explain pricing decisions, as well as ensuring algorithms are not biased against specific demographic groups. There is an operational cost in ensuring fair and transparent AI, however.