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McDonald's pricing engine

Incidents implicated systems

Incident 17293 Report
McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

2026-10-02

A U.S. consumer lawsuit alleged that fast-food chain McDonald's used an AI pricing engine trained on pooled confidential restaurant sales data to coordinate menu prices and make customers overpay. Franchisees allegedly faced pressure to follow its recommendations. McDonald's disputed the claims, saying franchisees independently set prices and the tool only provides recommendations.

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Related Entities
Other entities that are related to the same incident. For example, if the developer of an incident is this entity but the deployer is another entity, they are marked as related entities.
 

Entity

McDonald's

Incidents involved as both Developer and Deployer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

McDonald's franchisees

Incidents involved as Deployer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Restaurants

Incidents involved as Deployer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Tiger Analytics

Incidents involved as Developer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Algorithmic pricing system developers

Incidents involved as Developer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Deloitte

Incidents involved as Developer
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

McDonald's customers

Incidents Harmed By
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Consumers

Incidents Harmed By
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Michael Thomas

Incidents Harmed By
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

AI pricing optimization systems

Incidents implicated systems
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Algorithmic pricing systems

Incidents implicated systems
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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Entity

Enterprise AI systems

Incidents implicated systems
  • Incident 1729
    3 Reports

    McDonald's Allegedly Used an AI Pricing Engine to Coordinate U.S. Menu Prices and Make Customers Overpay

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