Instacart will stop using artificial intelligence to experiment with product pricing after a report showed that customers on the platform were paying different prices for the same items.

The report, published this month by Consumer Reports and Groundwork Collaborative, found that Instacart sometimes offered as many as five different prices for the same item at the same store and on the same day.

In a blog post Monday, Instacart said it was ending the practice effective immediately.

“We understand that the tests we ran with a small number of retail partners that resulted in different prices for the same item at the same store missed the mark for some customers,” the company said. “At a time when families are working exceptionally hard to stretch every grocery dollar, those tests raised concerns.”

Shoppers purchasing the same items from the same store on the same day will now see identical prices, the blog post said.

Instacart’s retail partners will still set product prices and may charge different prices across stores.

The report, which followed more than 400 shoppers in four cities, found that the average difference between the highest and lowest prices for the same item was 13%. Some participants in the study saw prices that were 23% higher than those offered to other shoppers.

At a Safeway supermarket in Washington, D.C., a dozen Lucerne eggs sold for $3.99, $4.28, $4.59, $4.69 and $4.79 on Instacart, depending on the shopper, the study showed.

At a Safeway in Seattle, a box of 10 Clif Chocolate Chip Energy bars sold for $19.43, $19.99 and $21.99 on Instacart.

The study found that an individual shopper on Instacart could theoretically spend up to $1,200 more on groceries in one year if they had to deal with the price differences observed in the pricing experiments.

The price experimentation was part of a program that Instacart advertised to retailers as a way to maximize revenue.

Instacart probably began adjusting prices in 2022, when the platform acquired the artificial intelligence company Eversight, whose software powers the experiments.

Instacart claimed that the Eversight experimentation would be negligible to consumers but could increase store revenue by up to 3%.

“Advances in AI enable experiments to be automatically designed, deployed, and evaluated, making it possible to rapidly test and analyze millions of price permutations across your physical and digital store network,” Instacart marketing materials said online.

The company said the price chranges were not dynamic pricing, the practice used by airlines and ride-hailing services to charge more when demand surges.
The price changes also were not based on shoppers’ personal information such as income, the company said.

“American grocery shoppers aren’t guinea pigs, and they should be able to expect a fair price when they’re shopping,” Lindsey Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, said in an interview this month.

Shares of Instacart fell 2% on Monday, closing at $45.02.

Big Tech companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and ServiceNow, have warned employees on visas to avoid leaving the country amid uncertainty about changing immigration policy and procedures.

Following an attack on National Guard members in Washington, the Trump administration expanded travel bans earlier this month, and beefed up vetting and data collection for visa applicants. The new policy now includes screening the social media history of some visa applicants and their dependents.

Soon after the announcement, U.S. consulates began rescheduling appointments for future dates, some as late as summer 2026, leaving employees who required appointments unable to return.

“Please be aware that some U.S. Embassies and Consulates are experiencing significant visa stamping appointment delays, currently reported as up to 12 months,” noted an email sent by Berry Appleman & Leiden LLC, the immigration firm that represents Google. The advisory also recommended “avoiding international travel at this time.”

Business Insider earlier reported on the travel advisories.

Microsoft’s memo noted that much of the rescheduling is occurring in India, in cities such as Chennai and Hyderabad, and that new stamping dates are as far out as June 2026.

The company advised employees with valid work authorization who were traveling outside the U.S. for stamping to return before their current visa expires. Those still in the U.S. scheduling upcoming travel for visa stamping should “strongly consider” changing their travel plans.

Apple’s immigration team also recommended that employees without a valid H1-B visa stamp avoid international travel for now.

ServiceNow, a business software company, similarly issued an advisory recommending that those with valid visa stamps return to the U.S.

Microsoft declined to comment on its memo. Apple, Google and ServiceNow did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Companies warned that delays due to enhanced screening is for H-1B, H-4, F, J and M visas.

H-1B is a high-skilled immigration visa program that allows employers to sponsor work visas for individuals with specialized skills. The program, capped at 85,000 new visas per year, is a channel for American tech giants to source skilled workers, such as software engineers.

Big Tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and Meta have consistently topped the charts in terms of the number of H-1B approvals, with Indian nationals as the largest beneficiaries of the program, accounting for 71% of approved H-1 B petitions.

H-1B visas are awarded through a lottery system, which its critics say has been exploited by companies to replace American workers with cheap foreign labor.

In September, the Trump administration announced a $100,000 fee for new H-1B employee hires. But after severe pushback, it clarified that it applied only to employers seeking to use the H-1B visa to hire foreign nationals not already in the U.S.

The H-1B program is an issue that has not only animated the right but also splintered it. Those on the tech-right, such as Elon Musk and David Sacks, are strongly in favor of strengthening skilled immigration, while the core MAGA base is vehemently opposed to it.

Proponents of the program often highlight that skilled worker immigration made the U.S a technological leader, and nearly half of the fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children, creating jobs for native-born Americans.

If it began to sound a lot like Christmas earlier than usual this year, it wasn’t your imagination.

Halloween wasn’t even over before Spotify users began curating songs about mistletoe, snow and presents under the tree.

Holiday playlists created on Spotify in the U.S. jumped 60% in October over last year, the Swedish audio company said. Some Spotify users started crafting holiday playlists as early as summer.

“It’s a combination of wanting to feel good and nostalgia, and these are testing times,” said Talia Kraines, editorial lead for pop at Spotify. “Somehow Christmas music brings comfort and I think that’s a real part of it.”

Indeed, eight of the top 10 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the week that ended Saturday were Christmas songs, with the top five being familiar holiday classics, including Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” Brenda Lee’s 1958 recording of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and Wham!’s “Last Christmas,” released in 1984.

On-demand streams for holiday music in the U.S. increased 27% to 8.3 billion this year, compared with a year ago, according to L.A.-based data firm Luminate.

The popularity of music streaming has helped to fuel a surge in users seeking out more holiday music, and earlier in the year.

The change has been driven by technology. In the pre-streaming era, consumers would play Christmas music through CDs and records or catch tunes on the radio during the winter months.

But the rise of Spotify, Apple Music and other streaming services opened the floodgates by offering large libraries of songs on demand.

The new platforms created and marketed holiday playlists, making it easier for consumers to discover seasonal songs and add new ones to their own song collections.

“You used to have a bunch of Christmas albums around and rotate them through as you’re decorating the house or wrapping the presents,” said Dave Bakula, vice president of analytics and data insights at Iconic Artists Group. “The availability of all the music, all the time is such an incredible gift that streaming services have given us.”

For musicians and record labels, holiday music also has taken on growing importance.

Vince Szydlowski, executive vice president of commerce at Universal Music Enterprises, the centralized global catalog division of Universal Music Group, said he starts planning the year’s campaign for holiday music in January.

“For UMG and many of the artists that you associate with holiday music, it will be the most important time of the year, without a doubt,” Szydlowski said. “In some cases, especially with certain legendary artists, it could make or break their year.”

One campaign Universal Music Enterprises worked on was promoting Elton John’s 1973 holiday song “Step Into Christmas.” The song was featured in Amazon Prime Video’s holiday movie “Oh. What. Fun,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer.

John posted viral social media videos with the song playing in the background that drew more than 100 million views.

Those efforts helped boost the track’s consumption by 44% this year compared with last year, according to Universal Music Group, citing data from Luminate.

“It’s a very comprehensive campaign in which to continue to boost that track visibility among the holiday perennials,” Szydlowski said.

Many of the popular Christmas songs in the U.S. date back decades, making it challenging for new, original holiday songs to break through.

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” has been the longest-running No. 1 song in Billboard Hot 100 history at 21 weeks, according to Billboard.

The holidays are an important time for older artists like Brenda Lee, whose rendition of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” remains a winter hit.

In November 2023, Lee’s version of the song topped Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the first time, 65 years after the song’s debut, making Lee, then 79, the oldest woman to top the Hot 100, according to UMG.

Then there are artists like the late Nat King Cole, known for hits like the holiday classic “The Christmas Song,” and Dean Martin, who died in 1995 and whose rendition of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” is especially popular during winter months.

Nat King Cole in 1963. “The Christmas Song” became one of his enduring hits.

(Capitol Records Archives)

Another source of appeal for Christmas music is that it‘s timeless.

It isn’t really affected by trends and the songs highlight themes like love, hope, joy and family that remind us of our friends, family and past Christmases, said Jimmy Edwards, president of Iconic Artists Group.

“It’s the one music that you can share it together from any age. As Nat would say, from 1 to 92, right?” Edwards said, referencing a lyric from Cole’s “The Christmas Song.” “Those emotional bonds you have with that music stay with you forever … It promotes the best of us and all the good things. That’s why people love it so much.”

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