By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n
June 22 (Reuters) – Gas station operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart and Albertsons were sued \u200con Monday by California drivers who accused them of using \u200cartificial intelligence to boost prices at the pump.<\/p>\n
According to a proposed class action, the \u200bdefendants violated California’s main antitrust law, the Cartwright Act, by using an AI-based tool that uses data from competing gas stations to “coordinate high prices and wring more money from the pockets of consumers.”<\/p>\n
The lawsuit in \u200cthe Sacramento, California federal court \u2060said the scheme violated Assembly Bill 325, a California law that took effect on January 1 and was \u2060intended 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 \u200bpercentages \u200bof stations use the AI tool, \u200bwhich comes from a company \u200ccalled Kalibrate.<\/p>\n
Each penny costs California drivers an extra $134 million per year, boosting gasoline prices to “astronomical” levels sometimes reaching $7 a gallon, the complaint said.<\/p>\n
“While families struggle to afford the commute to work, defendants have conspired to put an end to competition, joining an AI-powered trust to ensure \u200cthat no matter where a driver turns, \u200bthe price for gasoline is artificially high,” \u200bthe complaint said.<\/p>\n
The defendants \u200boperate more than 1,700 gas stations in California, according \u200cto the complaint. Kalibrate is also \u200ba defendant. The \u200bdefendants either did not immediately respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Californians pay the nation’s highest gas prices, averaging $5.58 \u200bper gallon for \u200cregular, according to AAA. The national average is $3.93.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit seeks \u200bunspecified damages for drivers who paid too much for gasoline.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Jonathan Stempel in New York)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel June 22 (Reuters) – Gas station operators including BP, Circle K, Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[150230,2080,7,9,3501,8,147,16387,86820,150229,2837],"class_list":["post-370671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-antitrust-law","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-law","tag-california-news","tag-gas-prices","tag-gas-station","tag-gasoline-prices","tag-marathon-petroleum","tag-walmart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}