San Francisco Board of Supervisors has passed on first reading a ban on artificial intelligence software that advises landlords on rent pricing or occupancy levels of units in the city — a practice which some say promotes unfair rent gouging.

The AI software gives landlords suggestions of how high to set a unit’s rent — or whether to keep it vacant — by using the rental data of their competitors. The fear is multiple landlords working together to keep prices high. 

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Cameron Fozi is a data journalism intern at Bay City News through the Dow Jones News Fund. He is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, where he reported and edited for the city and campus newspaper, the Daily Californian. In summer 2023, he interned for his hometown newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune.