AI, Pricing & Privacy Briefing

Patent Watch

A running catalog of AI consumer-space patents surfaced by the daily briefing — organized by theme and linked to primary sources.

Coverage note: US patent applications typically publish ~18 months after filing, so “new” here means newly published, not newly filed. A patent is added to this catalog when it is first published, or when it is newly referenced in news coverage or a company blog post (e.g., a firm’s academic fellows page).

11 patents catalogued5 of 6 categories populatedLast updated May 18, 2026

Algorithmic & Dynamic Pricing

3 patents

Patents covering automated price-setting systems, demand forecasting, price elasticity modeling, and personalized or dynamic pricing engines. Includes both market-condition dynamic pricing and consumer-characteristic personalized pricing.

WalmartPublished March 2026

Machine Learning Demand Prediction and Price Recommendation Using Third-Party Data

US12572954B2 · Google Patents ↗

A machine learning model trained on purchase history, payment methods, customer identification, and third-party data sources to predict item demand and generate recommended prices. The schematic in the filing explicitly shows third-party data as an input to the pricing engine — making this the more controversial of Walmart's two 2026 pricing patents, directly analogous to airline surveillance pricing that uses consumer identity signals to set fares. Where US12524776B2 automates markdown timing, this patent closes the loop by incorporating outside behavioral data to calibrate what price a given consumer will bear.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

WalmartPublished January 2026

System and Method for Dynamically and Automatically Updating Item Prices on E-Commerce Platform

US12524776B2 · Google Patents ↗

A machine learning system that uses price elasticity data and predicted demand to automatically generate markdown prices across Walmart's e-commerce platform. The patent covers two model paths: a primary model that fires when both elasticity and demand data are available (enabling precise per-item optimization), and a decay-rate fallback for when they are not — both bounded by configurable upper and lower price limits. Walmart publicly characterizes this as a 'markdown tool' rather than a dynamic or personalized pricing engine, but the underlying data infrastructure — per-item elasticity modeling, real-time demand signals — would make consumer-characteristic pricing technically feasible at scale. This is one of approximately 50 US patents Walmart secured in 2026.

Added to catalog May 17, 2026

Amazon TechnologiesPublished November 2006

Dynamic Pricing System

US7133848B2 · Google Patents ↗

Amazon's foundational dynamic pricing patent — the original architecture for adjusting prices in real time based on demand signals, competitor data, and inventory levels. Granted in 2006, this is the upstream ancestor of the entire algorithmic pricing patent landscape now being contested in regulatory proceedings and state legislatures. The infrastructure it describes — continuous price monitoring, automated adjustment triggers, competitive benchmarking — is what the FTC's 2024 surveillance-pricing study characterized as a systemic threat to consumer welfare.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Emotion AI & Behavioral Inference

5 patents

Patents covering facial expression recognition, sentiment analysis, affective computing, and systems that infer or respond to user emotional states for commercial purposes.

GooglePublished February 2025

Speech Emotion Recognition Using Large Language Models

US20250061917A1 · Google Patents ↗

Applies large language models to real-time speech to infer the speaker's emotional state — enabling emotion-aware responses, personalization, and targeting at scale across Google's voice and search surfaces. The architecture moves emotion inference from keyword-based heuristics to continuous, context-sensitive LLM analysis of tone, prosody, and content together. Published February 2025; surfaced in the May 11 briefing in the context of the EU AI Act's August 2026 emotion-AI compliance deadline.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Ford Motor CompanyPublished October 2019

Methods and Vehicles for Capturing Emotion of a Human Driver and Moderating Vehicle Response

US10453453B2 · Google Patents ↗

Captures facial expressions and voice patterns from a driver over time, fuses them to predict emotional state, and adjusts vehicle behavior accordingly — extending commercial emotion inference into the automobile. The system analyzes changes in facial expression across a sequence of camera frames and correlates them with voice profile shifts to generate an emotion prediction. Cited in the May 5 briefing as a 'know phase' marker in the tobacco-playbook arc: industry demonstrably knew how to capture and act on driver emotional state years before any regulatory framework existed to govern it.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Cogito CorporationPublished April 2019

Systems and Methods for Identifying Human Emotions and/or Mental Health States Based on Analyses of Audio Inputs and/or Behavioral Data Collected from Computing Devices

US10276188B2 · Google Patents ↗

Statistical models trained on passive mobile device behavioral signals — call frequency, SMS cadence, GPS movement patterns, accelerometer data — combined with vocal acoustic features extracted from audio diaries, to infer mental health states and emotion. The architecture describes continuous passive collection of behavioral traces from devices people carry at all times, with no active user input required. A foundational building block for the passive behavioral surveillance pipeline that underlies modern emotion AI products.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Amazon TechnologiesPublished October 2018

Voice-Based Determination of Physical and Emotional Characteristics of Users

US10096319B1 · Google Patents ↗

Alexa analyzes tone, pitch, speech pace, coughs, and sniffles to detect emotional and physical states — and the patent explicitly routes the findings toward 'highly targeted audio content, such as audio advertisements or promotions.' One example in the filing: a user coughs while asking about being hungry; Alexa detects the cough, infers illness, offers chicken soup, and when refused escalates to cough drops with one-hour delivery. The first confirmed instance of in-home emotion inference directly piped to an advertising and commerce engine.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Meta PlatformsPublished August 2015

Emotion Detection (Foundational)

US20150242679A1 · Google Patents ↗

An early Meta application for detecting user emotional states from platform interaction data — a foundational building block for the behavioral profiling pipeline later formalized in US12513102B2. Filed in 2015, the application describes inferring emotional states from how users engage with content: dwell time, interaction patterns, and response behaviors. No confirmed 2026-published equivalent; included as a foundational filing that establishes Meta's decade-long investment in emotion inference as a core platform capability.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Consumer Data & Privacy

1 patent

Patents covering data collection architectures, behavioral profiling systems, data broker infrastructure, and consumer data deletion or privacy-preserving mechanisms.

Meta PlatformsPublished February 2026

Generating and Presenting Personalized Content Based on Historical User Data (Posthumous Digital Persona)

US12513102B2 · Google Patents ↗

Constructs a persistent AI persona from a user's behavioral, emotional, and interaction data — including post-mortem operation (posthumous digital presence). The system analyzes a lifetime of platform activity to generate a digital twin capable of posting, reacting, and interacting on the user's behalf, including after death. Originally filed by Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth in 2023; granted December 2025 and published February 2026. Meta has stated it has no current plans to ship this as a product, describing it as a protective filing — the same framing used across the tobacco-playbook 'deny' phase. The most-cited patent across all daily briefing editions.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Agentic Commerce & Payments

1 patent

Patents covering AI agents making autonomous purchases, agentic payment authorization protocols, AI shopping agents, and agent identity verification systems.

Visa International Service AssociationPublished January 2026

On Demand Tokenization Processing

US20260006023A1 · Google Patents ↗

Dynamic token generation and scoping for payment transactions — the underlying credential architecture for Visa's Intelligent Commerce Connect agent payment platform. The system enables AI agents to be issued payment credentials scoped to a specific agent identity, spending limits, and permitted merchant categories, so that an autonomous agent can complete purchases within a defined consent boundary without exposing the consumer's underlying card credentials. Filed June 2024; part of the broader Visa/Mastercard race to own the credential layer of agentic commerce.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

Consumer Financial AI

Patents covering AI-driven financial advice, robo-advisory systems, AI credit decisioning, automated banking assistants, and sentiment-aware financial tools.

No patents catalogued in this category yet. The briefing will add entries here as they surface.

Other

1 patent

AI consumer-space patents relevant to the extraction-vs.-accountability thesis that don't fit neatly into the above categories.

Google LLCPublished January 2026

AI-Generated Content Page Tailored to a Specific User

US12536233B1 · Google Patents ↗

Scores a retailer's landing page in real time against a user's search intent, past queries, location, and conversion signals. If the page underperforms a threshold — based on bounce rate, click-through rate, or conversion quality — Google automatically substitutes an AI-generated replacement page, without the retailer's knowledge or consent. Granted January 27, 2026; filed July 2024. Widely covered as 'Google patented the right to replace your website.' The consumer data implications are significant: the system requires continuous behavioral tracking of users across sessions to generate the intent signals that trigger replacement.

Added to catalog May 18, 2026

This catalog is maintained by the automated AI, Pricing & Privacy daily briefing. Patents are added when they are newly published by the USPTO or EPO, or when a news article, regulatory filing, or company publication brings a relevant patent to our attention. It is not an exhaustive survey of all filings in these spaces. All patent links lead to Google Patents or the USPTO.