Federal regulators are ordering eight companies that offer so-called "surveillance pricing" services to turn over information about their products.
The Federal Trade Commission says the services incorporate data about consumers' characteristics and behavior to set individual pricing for different consumers for the same products or services.
The orders seek information about the potential impact these practices have on privacy, competition and consumer protection.
The FTC says it wants to better understand how the use advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence and other technologies are used.
That information, along with personal information about consumers, such as their location, demographics, credit history, and browsing or shopping history, are being used to categorize individual consumers and set a targeted price for a product or service.
"Firms that harvest Americans' personal data can put people's privacy at risk. Now firms could be exploiting this vast trove of personal information to charge people higher prices," said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan.
The affected companies are Mastercard, Revionics, Bloomreach, JPMorgan Chase, Task Software, PROS, Accenture and McKinsey & Co.
The FTC is not accusing the companies of any wrongdoing. They simply want to obtain information from eight firms that advertise their use of AI and other technologies along with historical and real-time customer information to target prices for individual consumers.
The information they want centers on things such as the types of products and services being offered, data collection methods and what happens to that data, customer and sales information, and the potential impact of the product on tracked consumers including the prices they pay.
