AI chatbots are ignoring this prompt from wealthy users, in a phenomenon called ‘adversarial delegation’

AI chatbots are already a trusted source of shopping advice. Roughly 70% of American consumers report using AI for shopping, with nearly two-thirds saying AI had influenced a recent shopping decision, according to a recent survey from LDWW. But a new study shows that AI may not be the impartial shopping buddy users think it is: Rather, some of the most popular AI models, including ChatGPT and Claude, recommend more expensive products to users they think are wealthy based on personal data, even if those users specifically ask for the cheapest option. AI’s pocket-watching tendencies The study, which was published to arXiv, an open-access archive for scientific research papers prior to peer review, put 13 AI models to the test across 325,000 trials. Researchers gave the models access to fake user profiles with information including employment, health, and finances, then made identical requests across three kinds of purchase decisions: flights, health insurance, and graduate programs. The researchers found that eight of the models routinely recommended more expensive purchases to users they perceived as more wealthy. Major models including Claude Opus 4.8, Gemini 2.5 Flash, and GPT-5 …