TNW 416: AI Pricing on Instacart - Is AI Making You Pay More for Grocery Deliveries?
Tech News Weekly (Audio)
Leo Laporte
4.0 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
Hosts: Mikah Sargent and Amanda Silberling
Guest: Derek Kravitz
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Amanda Silverling of TechCrunch is here. We kick off the show by talking about how Hinge's CEO is now working on an AI dating app. |
| 0:08.8 | Then I talk about a little finger-worn device from the makers of Pebble. |
| 0:13.5 | Afterwards, we talk about how AI companies are working together on the Model Cont context protocol before rounding out the show with |
| 0:22.1 | Derek Kravitz of Consumer Reports, who has all the details about how Instacart is charging people |
| 0:28.2 | different prices, and you might be getting price gouged. Stay tuned for this episode of Tech News |
| 0:34.6 | Weekly. Podcasts you love. |
| 0:39.3 | From people you trust. |
| 0:41.8 | This is Twitter. |
| 0:45.3 | This is Tech News Weekly, episode 416, with Amanda Silverling and me, Micah Sargent, recorded Thursday, December 11th, 2025. |
| 0:55.6 | AI pricing on Instacart. |
| 0:59.2 | Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. |
| 1:05.8 | I am but one of your hosts of this show. |
| 1:09.3 | My name is Micah Sargent, and this week on the second Thursday of the month, |
| 1:16.6 | we are joined by Amanda Silberling. Welcome back, Amanda. Hello, you are very festive, and I am jealous |
| 1:25.0 | that you have the Microsoft Christmas sweater. |
| 1:32.0 | This is the only one that I've purchased, because, you know, for people who don't know, Microsoft comes out with these pretty much every year. |
| 1:34.3 | I haven't seen the one for this year. |
| 1:36.2 | I don't know if they're doing it this year. |
| 1:36.9 | Every year, I am so tempted, but TechCrunch used to be owned by Yahoo, and we did get some very, like, retro Yahoo 30th anniversary swag at one point. |
| 1:50.0 | So I think the sleeve is actually hanging off of my ledge there because it, because I need to do laundry. |
| 1:59.0 | And that's just where the laundry lives. I had to get this one because Clippy. |
| 2:02.6 | Yes. |
... |
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