McDonald's is facing a proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit in federal court in Chicago alleging the fast-food giant illegally coordinates menu prices across its franchised and company-owned restaurants using an AI-powered pricing system. The lawsuit, filed on Friday, claims the company violated US antitrust law by conspiring with independent franchisees to fix prices using algorithms trained on nonpublic data. Reuters reported last week that McDonald's pricing engine uses machine-learning algorithms to continually analyze data from millions of daily transactions across its nearly 14,000 restaurants, and the lawsuit cited that article, which noted other fast-food companies are also turning to AI for pricing and other operations. McDonald's said in a statement on Monday that the allegations are speculative and uninformed, adding that AI does not set the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item, that franchisees make their own pricing decisions, and that pricing recommendation tools and analytics are widely used across industries.
McDonald’s CorporationMcDonald's faces a nationwide antitrust class-action alleging its AI pricing system illegally coordinates menu prices with franchisees.
