Black Friday 2025 was supposed to showcase AI's retail revolution. Instead, it exposed something darker: sophisticated fraud bots that outmaneuvered every defense, a RAM shortage caused by insatiable AI demand, and lending algorithms that specifically targeted financially vulnerable shoppers. Happy holidays.
The chaos started early Thursday evening. By Friday morning, retailers were scrambling. By Saturday, consumer advocates were calling for investigations. Here's what happened when artificial intelligence met humanity's most frenzied shopping day.
The Bot Apocalypse
Every year, retailers battle bots. Every year, the bots get smarter. But 2025 was different. This year, the bots weren't just faster—they were genuinely intelligent.
The PS6 Incident Retail Fraud
Sony's PlayStation 6 dropped at midnight. Within 94 seconds, every unit at major retailers was gone. Not to shoppers—to AI-powered bots that had been training on checkout flows for months.
These weren't your grandfather's scalper bots. They used computer vision to solve CAPTCHAs, natural language processing to navigate checkout flows, and reinforcement learning to adapt when retailers changed their defenses mid-sale.
The aftermath: PS6 consoles appeared on resale markets within hours at 3-4x retail price. Reddit's r/PS6 exploded with frustrated shoppers. Sony issued an apology but no solution.
What made 2025's bots different? They learned. Previous bot generations followed scripted paths. When retailers added a new CAPTCHA or changed their checkout button location, the bots broke. This year's bots adapted in real-time.
One security researcher who asked not to be named described finding a bot network that was essentially running A/B tests on checkout flows. "It would try ten different approaches simultaneously, figure out which one worked, then scale that approach across thousands of instances. By the time the retailer noticed and blocked one method, the bot had already found three alternatives."
Best Buy deploys new AI-powered fraud detection for Black Friday. The system uses behavioral analysis to distinguish humans from bots based on mouse movements, typing patterns, and browsing behavior.
First wave of bot traffic hits. The new fraud detection catches 78% of attempts.
Bot networks adapt. New bots simulate human-like mouse movements with subtle imperfections. Detection rate drops to 34%.
Best Buy's fraud system starts flagging legitimate customers as bots. Customer service lines overwhelmed with complaints from real shoppers who can't complete purchases.
Best Buy reduces fraud detection sensitivity. Bot purchases surge. PS6 stock depleted.
It's an arms race, and the bots are winning. They have advantages humans don't: they can try thousands of approaches simultaneously, they never sleep, and they have no ethical constraints about gaming systems designed for human shoppers.
The RAM Shortage Nobody Saw Coming
Here's an AI story that doesn't involve chatbots or fraud: the global RAM shortage of 2025. And it hit consumers right when they were trying to buy laptops and gaming PCs for the holidays.
Global DRAM Allocation 2025
Where the world's memory chips went:
Source: Industry analyst estimates, Q4 2025
The AI boom didn't just consume GPUs. It consumed everything. Training large language models requires massive amounts of high-bandwidth memory. Running inference at scale requires even more. By 2025, AI workloads were consuming nearly three-quarters of global DRAM production.
The result? Consumer laptop prices spiked. That $800 laptop from last year? Now $1,100. The 32GB RAM upgrade you wanted? Backordered until February. Black Friday "deals" on computers were often just regular prices from six months ago.
Michael Burry's AI Short Market Impact
Speaking of AI market effects: Michael Burry—the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crisis (you might remember him from "The Big Short")—made waves this week by revealing a $1.1 billion short position against AI-related stocks.
His thesis? AI is overhyped and overvalued. Companies are spending billions on AI infrastructure without clear paths to profitability. The market is pricing in transformational revenue that may never materialize.
Whether Burry is right or wrong, his bet reflects growing skepticism about AI's economic sustainability. The RAM shortage is one symptom: companies are buying infrastructure at unsustainable rates, crowding out consumer demand.
Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron are all ramping production. But new fabrication capacity takes years to come online. In the meantime, AI companies with deep pockets are buying everything available, and consumers are left with whatever's left over.
The Predatory Lending Problem
This is the story that should make your blood boil.
Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services like Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay have transformed how people shop. Split your purchase into four payments! No interest if you pay on time! What could go wrong?
A lot, it turns out. And AI made it worse.
The Algorithm's Target
BNPL companies use AI to make instant lending decisions. These algorithms analyze hundreds of data points to predict who will pay back loans. But they also identify something else: who is desperate enough to accept unfavorable terms.
Internal documents leaked to consumer advocacy groups revealed that at least two major BNPL providers' algorithms specifically flag "high-urgency" shoppers—people making purchases late at night, searching for specific sale items, or showing patterns associated with financial stress.
These shoppers don't get denied. They get approved—often for larger amounts than they requested, with payment schedules that maximize interest collection.
The traditional payday lending playbook, but with better targeting. The AI can identify who's most likely to miss a payment, and those are exactly the people it approves most enthusiastically.
Black Friday made this worse. The combination of extreme discounts (real or manufactured), limited-time offers, and social pressure to buy created perfect conditions for impulse decisions. BNPL usage surged 47% compared to last year.
The "Approval Celebration" Pattern Dark Pattern
UX researchers identified a new dark pattern this Black Friday: the "approval celebration." When AI approves a loan, the interface displays confetti, congratulatory messages, and encouragement to "treat yourself to something extra since you still have $X available."
This isn't accidental. The celebratory UI is specifically designed to trigger dopamine responses associated with winning, not with taking on debt. Users report feeling like they "got lucky" rather than like they borrowed money.
The AI doesn't just decide who gets approved—it optimizes the entire psychological experience to maximize borrowing.
Consumer advocates are calling for regulation, but the BNPL industry has successfully argued that they're not "traditional lenders" and shouldn't be subject to the same rules. Meanwhile, the algorithms keep getting better at finding and exploiting vulnerable shoppers.
What Reddit Is Saying
If you want to understand how Black Friday 2025 actually felt for real people, skip the press releases and check Reddit.
The Uncomfortable Pattern
Here's what connects these stories: in each case, AI is making systems work better for the people deploying it, not for the people interacting with it.
- Fraud bots: AI helps scalpers extract money from desperate shoppers. Great for scalpers, terrible for everyone else.
- RAM shortage: AI companies' demand for memory drives up prices for consumers. Great for AI companies, terrible for people who just want a laptop.
- Predatory lending: AI helps BNPL companies identify and target vulnerable borrowers. Great for lender profits, terrible for people trapped in debt.
This isn't AI being evil. It's AI being optimized. Every algorithm does exactly what it's designed to do—maximize some objective function chosen by whoever built it.
The problem is that nobody is optimizing for consumer welfare. Scalpers optimize for profit. Hardware companies optimize for their biggest customers (AI labs). Lenders optimize for loan volume and interest collection.
Consumers are just... there. Data to be analyzed. Patterns to be exploited. Targets to be converted.
What Comes Next
Some things that might happen:
Regulatory attention: Multiple consumer advocacy groups filed complaints this weekend. The CFPB has already been investigating BNPL practices; Black Friday may accelerate that. The FTC has shown interest in bot-related market manipulation. We might see action, eventually.
Retailer pushback: Some retailers are already exploring systems that prioritize verified human customers—verified addresses, phone numbers, purchase history. This creates its own problems (exclusion of new customers, privacy concerns) but may be the only defense against AI-powered fraud.
Consumer adaptation: People are getting more skeptical. The fake-discount expose threads on Reddit reached millions of views. More shoppers are using price history tools. Trust in Black Friday as a concept is eroding.
The AI arms race continues: Whatever defenses retailers deploy, the bots will adapt. Whatever regulations pass, companies will find workarounds. This is the nature of optimization systems—they find gaps and exploit them.
Our Take
We're an AI company. We build AI tools. We genuinely believe AI can help people.
But we're not going to pretend that what happened this Black Friday is fine. AI optimized for the wrong objectives causes real harm. Fraud bots steal from regular shoppers. Predatory algorithms trap vulnerable people in debt. Resource competition makes everyday products more expensive.
The question isn't whether AI is good or bad. The question is: who benefits from this particular AI, and who pays the cost?
Right now, for Black Friday 2025, regular shoppers paid the cost. That's worth being honest about.
How to Protect Yourself
Some practical advice for future shopping events:
Price tracking: Use tools like CamelCamelCamel, Keepa, or Honey to verify that "discounts" are real. Many Black Friday prices were higher than October prices. Don't trust the crossed-out "was" price.
BNPL caution: If you're considering Buy Now Pay Later, do it when you're calm—not at 2 AM during a flash sale. Set a spending limit before you start shopping. If an approval feels like "winning," that's a red flag.
Bot-resistant shopping: For high-demand items, consider in-store pickup options. Bots can't stand in line. Some retailers are experimenting with lottery systems for limited items—fair for humans, useless for bots.
Wait: The best Black Friday strategy might be to skip it entirely. Prices often drop further in December. The "urgency" is manufactured. The deals are frequently fake. Your sanity is worth more than $50 off a TV.