Walmart CEO John Furner: no AI personalized pricing

Walmart's letter comes as companies face questions about how customer information and emerging technology could be used to set prices. Furner tied the company's position to Walmart's long-running Every Day Low Prices approach, which is intended to give customers consistent prices without having to check whether another shopper is getting a better deal. He also addressed digital shelf labels directly, saying they are meant to keep shelf prices aligned with checkout prices and cut the time employees spend replacing paper tags.

The letter extends the same logic to Sparky, Walmart's AI shopping assistant. Furner said information customers share there is an invitation to serve them better, not to set a personalized price, and said Walmart will not use it to raise a customer's price or hide lower-priced products that meet the shopper's needs. He also said Walmart will keep letting customers decide whether to share extra information for more personalized assistance, and will explain how that information is used and protected.

Furner framed the commitments as three that Walmart plans to maintain as its technology changes, with employees continuing to oversee pricing and the company monitoring and testing its technology for compliance. How much reassurance this gives shoppers may hinge on how those tests are run and reported, since the commitments are voluntary and the letter does not describe an outside check. For Walmart, the stakes are the trust Furner invoked when he thanked customers for trusting the company with part of their family's budget.