Dec 11th 2025
Tech News Weekly 416
AI Pricing on Instacart
Is AI Making You Pay More for Grocery Deliveries?
Amanda Silberling of TechCrunch joins Mikah Sargent on Tech News Weekly this week! The former CEO of Hinge left his position this week to launch an AI-powered dating app. Pebble is coming out with its take on a smart ring. What is the AI Model Context Protocol? And could grocery delivery services be using AI to charge different prices for groceries to consumers?
- Amanda talks about a new AI-powered dating app called Overtone that the former CEO of Hinge, Justin McLeod, has founded.
- Pebble is coming out with its own smart ring with a built-in microphone, and Mikah has some quarrels with the device.
- Mikah talks about the Model Context Protocol, or MCP: an approach companies like Google and OpenAI have adopted that would allow AI agents to access information online in a standardized manner easily, and now Anthropic has donated the protocol to the Linux Foundation.
- And Derek Kravitz of Consumer Reports joins the show to talk about its investigation into Instacart utilizing artificial intelligence that would offer different prices of the same product to consumers.
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Links
- Hinge CEO steps down to launch Overtone, an AI dating app | TechCrunch
- The Pebble Index 01 is a smart ring with a built-in microphone | The Verge
- AI companies want a new internet — and they think they’ve found the key | The Verge
- Exclusive: Instacart’s AI Pricing May Be Inflating Your Grocery Bill - Consumer Reports