Gas station owners have found a use case for AI, lawsuit says: colluding to fix prices

AI-powered software has allowed gas station operators across California to illegally collude and drive up prices at the pump, according to a federal lawsuit.

The proposed class action lawsuit, filed Monday, accuses gas station giants including Marathon and Circle K of violating California’s antitrust law through Kalibrate, a fuel-pricing software system used across the world. The plaintiffs describe Kalibrate as the “central nervous system for a conspiracy to extinguish retail price competition among gas stations.”

According to the lawsuit, Kalibrate helps “coordinate high prices” and even discourages its users from pricing their gas lower than competitors, saying that doing so would trigger a “downward spiral.”

“Kalibrate promises that if gas stations surrender their pricing decisions and competitively sensitive cost and volume data to Kalibrate Fuel Pricing, the software will enable them to avoid competing with other area stations and to charge higher prices to consumers,” the lawsuit said.

Californians already pay some of the highest gas prices in the nation, and prices have surged across the globe since the start of the Iran war.

The lawsuit is the late...