\n<\/p>\n
Gas \u2060station \u200boperators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers \u2060who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump.<\/p>\n
According to a proposed class action, the defendants \u2060violated California\u2019s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that \u200buses data from competing gas \u200cstations to \u201ccoordinate high prices \u200cand wring more money from the pockets of consumers\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit in the \u200cSacramento federal court said the scheme violated assembly bill 325, a California law that took effect on 1 January and was intended to crack down on algorithmic price fixing.<\/p>\n
Drivers said gas prices have risen as much as 30 cents a gallon in areas where high percentages of stations \u200cuse the AI tool, which comes from a company called Kalibrate. Each penny costs California drivers an extra $134m per year, boosting \u200bgasoline prices to \u201castronomical\u201d levels sometimes reaching $7 a gallon, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile families struggle to afford the commute to work, defendants have conspired to put an end to competition, joining an AI-powered trust to ensure that no matter where a \u2060driver turns, the price for gasoline is artificially high,\u201d the complaint said.<\/p>\n
The \u200bdefendants operate more \u200bthan 1,700 gas stations in California, \u200baccording to the complaint. Kalibrate is also a defendant. The \u200bdefendants either did \u200cnot immediately \u200brespond to requests for \u200bcomment or declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Californians pay the nation\u2019s highest gas prices, averaging $5.58 per gallon for regular, according to AAA. The national average is $3.93. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for drivers who paid too much for gasoline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gas \u2060station \u200boperators including BP, Circle K, Marathon, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued on Monday by California drivers \u2060who accused them of using artificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump. According to a proposed class action, the defendants \u2060violated California\u2019s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that \u200buses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[5456,667,8758,867,24829,269,13562,1335],"class_list":{"0":"post-50573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-allegedly","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-drivers","11":"tag-gas","12":"tag-inflate","13":"tag-prices","14":"tag-stations","15":"tag-sue"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}