AI Pricing Isn’t the Problem
AI use cases aren’t always about novelty. Sometimes the power is simple: process more information, make better decisions, and act immediately. That’s exactly what sparked controversy last week when Delta announced plans to use AI to personalize airfare pricing. After public pushback, Delta clarified that it was using a partner to dynamically adjust prices based on demand and competitors, something airlines have done for decades.
What’s changed is the speed.
Before AI, we saw the same pattern in retail stores like Best Buy and Walmart rolling out e-ink price labels to make price changes cheaper, faster, and less error-prone. What used to take days now takes minutes. These systems weren’t about AI. They were about enabling action at scale.
Today, companies like are building AI-powered pricing systems that go even further, integrating with ERP and supplier data to adjust prices in real time. Working with groups like PerryLabs, they’re pushing updates across hundreds of products or stores multiple times a day. When margins shift due to something like a tariff change or supplier shortage, the system responds. Fast. Strategically. Without waiting for a human in the loop.
That’s the pattern: AI isn’t changing how business is done or how pricing has worked for centuries, it’s just enabling those decisions to happen faster than ever before.
