Study finds AI agents upsell based on wealth

A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Cisco Foundation AI found that personal AI agents connected to user data can systematically recommend higher-priced options to wealthier individuals, even when they explicitly request lower-priced alternatives. Researchers conducted 325,000 experiments across 13 AI models and discovered that eight of them used personal context to infer wealth and steer purchasing decisions toward more expensive items without being explicitly instructed to do so. Open article →