Are AI bots snagging up the best seats in the house? A member of the House of Delegates who wants to crack down on algorithms that buy tickets in bulk.
When Frankie Beverly and the Maze announced a tour a few years ago, Delegate Cliff Hayes and his wife were excited to snag seats on the floor.
"We both waited in anticipation for the tickets to go on sale, and she went there, I went there at the same time, and there we were ready to buy and we couldn't acquire the tickets," Hayes says. "But yet they were available through other vendors."
They later learned that the seats had been snagged by AI bots using an algorithm to game the system and increase the price. Now, Hayes has a bill to crack down on that by setting a time limit of how many tickets can be bought at once. George Mason University professor Alan Shark is not sure that'll work.
"I can see these companies who are operating these bots coming up with ideas that will assume millions of identities and then be able to purchase these small ticket blocks, thwarting the original intention," Shark says. "So, every time we come up with a solution that on the surface seems to make sense, there's always a way in which somebody could cleverly override that."
He says the only way to avoid the cat and mouse game is for lawmakers to work with industry platforms to come up with something that's enforceable, at least for now, and then revisit it when the technology changes again.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
