An AI system generates personalized pricing for e-commerce customers. Regulatory investigators find that older customers consistently receive higher prices for identical products. The company argues the model uses purchase history and browsing behavior, not age, as inputs. What concept BEST describes the mechanism by which age discrimination could still occur?

The correct concept is indirect discrimination through proxy discrimination, where behavioral features correlated with age produce systematically higher prices for older customers. Even without age directly, browsing patterns, device type, or purchase history can correlate with age and create age-discriminatory outcomes. This is a facially neutral variable producing protected-class disparate impact. Direct discrimination would require age as an explicit input. Statistical discrimination could be a strategy, but the scenario describes an unintentional correlation. Intentional redlining implies deliberate targeting, which the facts do not establish.