AI incident ·
Coupang Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithms to Boost Own Products
In brief
An AI system built and deployed by Coupang allegedly harmed Coupang Suppliers and Coupang Customers.
- Risk domain
- Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 4 reports
What happened
Coupang was alleged in internal reports tampering its search algorithms to prioritize exposure of its own products, which potentially violated Korea's Fair Trade Act.
Laws that address this harm
Policy angle: Classified under Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms (Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case in South Korea.
- Colorado AI Act
- Framework Convention on AI (CETS 225)
- India DPDP Act
- Law on Artificial Intelligence (2025)
- Law No. 132/2025 on artificial intelligence
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (4)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms
- Causal entity
- Human
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
- Harm level
- AI tangible harm event
- Sectors
- wholesale and retail trade
- Countries
- KR
Risk entries describing this failure mode
Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 6.1.
- Monopolisation
"Monopolisation - Abuse of market power through the control of prices, thereby limiting competition and creating unfair barriers to entry."
- Power concentration
"Power concentration - Amplification of concentration of economic and/or political wealth and power, potentially resulting in increased inequality and instability."
- Potential exploitation by totalitarian regimes
- Corporate power may impeded effective governance
"The increasing power and influence of large corporations may make effective governance difficult. There exists a power asymmetry between corporate entities profiting from LLMs and other social groups (e.g. civil society...
- Market concentration risks and single points of failure
"Market power is concentrated among a few companies that are the only ones able to build the leading general- purpose AI models. Widespread adoption of a few general- purpose AI models and systems by critical sectors inc...
- Global AI Divide
"General- purpose AI research and development is currently concentrated in a few Western countries and China. This ‘AI Divide’ is multicausal, but in part related to limited access to computing power in low- income count...
- Global AI R&D divide
"Large companies in countries with strong digital infrastructure lead in general- purpose AI R&D, which could lead to an increase in global inequality and dependencies. For example, in 2023, the majority of notable gener...
- Market concentration and single points of failure
"Market shares for general- purpose AI tend to be highly concentrated among a few players, which can create vulnerability to systemic failures. The high degree of market concentration can invest a small number of large t...
Incidents in the same risk subdomain
- LLM Scrapers Allegedly Target Multiple Open Source Projects Disrupting the FOSS Ecosystem
- Amazon Allegedly Tweaked Search Algorithm to Boost Its Own Products
- Gmail’s Inbox Sorting System Reportedly Reduced Visibility of Political Emails and Campaign Calls-to-Action
- Google Fined for Changing Shopping Algorithms in EU to Favor Own Service
- Amazon India Allegedly Rigged Search Results to Promote Own Products
Source record: incident #435 on the AI Incident Database · all 4 reports