Overview
Michael Weiner, Lee Berger, and Weisiyu Jiang contributed to the Fall 2025 edition of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Magazine. They co-authored an article, "Coordination by Code: Rethinking Antitrust Liability in the Age of AI Pricing."
The article discusses how the rise of AI-driven pricing tools is reshaping antitrust analysis, particularly under Section 1 of the Sherman Act. It explains that traditional collusion typically required explicit communication, but shared reliance on AI pricing algorithms can create coordinated outcomes even without human agreement.
The authors examine two key cases: RealPage, where landlords’ contribution of confidential data to a shared algorithm may constitute an unlawful information exchange, and Gibson, where courts rejected coordination claims because no competitively sensitive data was pooled and users were not required to follow algorithmic outputs. The article then applies these principles to five hypothetical airline scenarios, illustrating how antitrust risk varies based on data sharing, user knowledge, and intentional coordination. It concludes that AI complicates the concept of "agreement," and evolving laws, such as California’s amended Cartwright Act, may increasingly treat algorithmic price alignment as inherently suspect.
Read the article at the American Bar Association (subscription may be required).
