McDonald’s is facing a proposed nationwide class-action lawsuit in a US federal court over allegations that it used an AI-powered pricing system to coordinate menu prices among its restaurants and franchisees.
Filed in Chicago on Friday, the lawsuit claims the company violated US antitrust laws by working with independent franchisees to fix prices through algorithms trained on nonpublic data. It argues that independent businesses are required to make pricing decisions separately.
The legal action follows a Reuters report that McDonald’s pricing engine uses machine-learning technology to analyse data from millions of daily transactions across nearly 14,000 restaurants.
The lawsuit also points to the growing use of AI by other fast-food companies for pricing and operational decisions.
McDonald’s rejected the allegations, describing them as speculative and uninformed. “AI does not set the price of a Big Mac or any other menu item,” the company said, adding that franchisees independently determine their prices and that pricing recommendation tools and analytics are widely used across industries.
The case comes amid a wave of US class actions alleging illegal price coordination through algorithms in various sectors.
