The news: Rising scrutiny from consumers, advocates, and lawmakers over increasingly sophisticated pricing technology, including digital shelf labels, prompted Walmart CEO John Furner to publicly spell out how the retailer sets prices. Walmart said in March that 2,300 US stores had digital shelf labels, with plans to roll them out chainwide by next year.

“Prices can change,” Furner wrote in a statement on Walmart’s website. “We lower them when we can pass savings along. Sometimes they rise because an item costs more to buy or transport.”

But he drew a clear line around what Walmart won’t use to determine those prices. The retailer has not—and will not—use personal information such as income, shopping history, urgency, or willingness to pay to determine what an individual customer pays. Nor will it adjust prices based on factors such as the time of day. Furner also pledged that the AI shopping assistant Sparky won’t use customer information to raise prices or hide lower-priced options that meet shoppers’ needs.

“Whether you’re buying groceries or electronics on a hot afternoon or in a sudden rush for an item, it’s never a reason to charge you more,” he wrote.

The context: Furner’s statement comes as Walmart, Kroger, and other retailers replace paper shelf tags with digital labels. Retailers say the technology makes it easier to keep shelf and checkout prices aligned while eliminating the time-consuming task of manually replacing paper tags.

But greater pricing automation is prompting policymakers to put guardrails around how that technology can be used. New Jersey in July prohibited retailers from using personal information to charge shoppers different prices for identical products based on what an algorithm predicts they’re willing to pay. The state also imposed a one-year moratorium on new electronic shelf labels while it studies the technology’s effects.

Seattle has taken a similar approach, restricting large grocers from using consumers’ sensitive personal data and AI to determine individualized prices while preserving traditional coupons and discounts.

The scrutiny is broader than those measures. Federal and state officials, including US Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James, have raised concerns that electronic shelf labels could make it easier for retailers to rapidly change prices, including in response to shifts in demand.

Those concerns are understandable given how quickly pricing technology is evolving. Retailers can use automation to mark down excess inventory or respond to changing costs, while advances in first-party data, AI, and digital shelf infrastructure create the potential for much more sophisticated pricing strategies. The challenge is distinguishing those use cases clearly enough that consumers understand where retailers draw the line.

Implications for retailers: Pricing automation offers clear efficiency gains, but those benefits depend in part on maintaining consumers’ trust. Nearly two-thirds of consumers are concerned about personalized pricing, per a Talker Research survey conducted in December, making transparency particularly important as retailers introduce more sophisticated technology.

That puts the onus on retailers like Walmart to explain not only why prices change but also what they won’t do—particularly when it comes to using customer data to determine what an individual shopper pays.

This content is part of EMARKETER’s subscription Briefings, where we pair daily updates with data and analysis from forecasts and research reports. Our Briefings prepare you to start your day informed, to provide critical insights in an important meeting, and to understand the context of what’s happening in your industry. Non-clients can click here to get a demo of our full platform and coverage.