Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share something that I’m hoping will help me when it comes to making better choices about what I buy. While this isn’t about promoting European products in the first instance, it’s designed to help me figure out which brands I currently use, but may need to avoid, so I can find better alternatives that are local, European, allied countries, or even values-led US brands if no other option exists.

Here’s what I did:

  1. Got the idea from Reddit: I saw a post on Reddit with a visual of all the brands owned by big multinational companies. Really helpful to see the visual but there were literally thousands, and I wanted a text list I could feed into an AI chat as a reference document.

  2. Did Some Research: I looked up these multinational companies on Wikipedia which seemed to have a relatively updated list of subsidiary brands, focusing on the parent companies I wanted to steer clear of, like PepsiCo, Nestle etc.

  3. Cleaned Up the List: I used AI tool to organise everything into a neat PDF.

  4. Made It Easy to Use for me with AI: I added the PDF to a chat in Mistral so I can quickly check any products I see in my fridge or cupboard. The AI helps me spot any brands I should avoid. I can also just list the brands off using voice for ease/speed but accuracy suffers a bit. I may also be able to just take a picture but haven’t tried that yet.

The image is the output.

Anybody with access to a simple list and an LLM could do this. Been inspired by the excellent websites and resources others have made and posted here, which I will use to find alternatives - but I first needed to know where the problems were!

Im hoping this will make it easier to buy stuff that aligns with my values. Hope this makes sense and helps someone else too!

Edit1: added link to source PDF containing list of companies and their brands. You can download this and search manually to avoid any use of AI. https://files.catbox.moe/jtmcb5.pdf

  • NotLemming@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    4 hours ago

    Can I just have an app pls? Do your favourite deity’s work and make it as easy as possible for people to do the right thing.

    It would be ideal to have a searchable database of brands/products, with label scan function. I’m imagining a user choice of boycott options with a little info given on what each boycott is about. So maybe selectable by mass grouping ‘buy European, avoid US brands’ or ‘avoid brands supporting zionism’ and then more individual choices ‘avoid Nestlé brands’.

    If you really want to make me happy then also judge products for ultra processed foods and toxic ingredients like Yuka does.

    And make it available on Izzydroid or similar.

    Thanks in advance!

    PS. That’s not all, in my dreams there is a browser add on to judge my online shopping basket so I don’t even have to search for brands/products.

    • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      1·
      45 minutes ago

      Hi there. I really like your thinking. I’m not a professional developer, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time that apps that do something like this are available.

      Here’s a post I saw on a related community which describes something like what would make you happy :)

      https://feddit.uk/post/25526618

      Also, I tested my own very basic idea by taking a picture and uploading to the Mistral chat - it identified the products accurately, which was promising.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 day ago

    Nestle is evil. While I appreciate trying to vote with your €, Nestle is a pretty awful company. I don’t even think it’s a lesser evil. Choose carefully.

    • biofaust@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 hours ago

      I know I am in the minority, but it’s not like the rest of Switzerland should be supported economically or politically either.

      Of course, Hungary should come first, but I think that having it in the EU gives us leverage that we will never have with Switzerland.

  • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
    17·
    2 days ago

    A good idea, but be weary: LLMs will often give outputs that sound plausible but are actually not consistent with what you gave them. Ultimately, you should check the output every time.

    At which point, it may be better to just have a detailed list and do a Find operation. Still plenty of applications for non-AI workflows.

    • antipiratgruppen@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      16 hours ago

      Does the PDF contain all the products of all the brands associated with each top-level US company (owner)? If not, the LLM can help finding the connections between product/brand and US-based owner, given that it was trained on data about those relations. However, if the relevant training data is lacking or faulty, it could also sometimes result in wrong answers… (but with confidence!)

      • synicalx@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 hours ago

        Sounds like the PDF, assuming it’s accurate and current, is more reliable.

    • colourlessidea@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      3·
      1 day ago

      It’s essentially an image with logos of brands and no text - OP posted it above

      Edit: it appears I was wrong, there is also a text only PDF so your point is valid

  • porompopmpom@lemmy.ml
    1138·
    3 days ago

    The sentiment is great, but I really wish people would stop using AI for everything.

    No matter your opinion about AI in general, which I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of, there is a true environmental cost associated with it, and using it for such trivial tasks is not such a great idea.

    Edit: wording and format

    • fuzzyspudkiss@midwest.socialEnglish
      348·
      3 days ago

      While I agree the environmental impact of LLM is concerning, I disagree that this is a poor use for it.

      It’s pretty much the best case scenario for using an LLM. There are so many companies within companies that if you’re trying to avoid an umbrella brand an LLM can quickly parse through that data and provide a response. Whereas you may take 5 minutes trying to find an answer and if you’re grocery shopping that could add up very quickly.

      And this is trivial for an LLM to do and would use barely any compute. As always, companies that are using AI to generate images, replace staff and moderate their websites that are going to be creating 99% of the environment damage by AI. We shouldn’t be going after individuals who are using it to make their day-to-day easier especially if they’re using it to hurt monopolies.

      • porompopmpom@lemmy.ml
        11·
        3 days ago

        Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I understand correctly from the steps provided, it was manual data extraction.

        AI was used to “organize data into a neat PDF”, and to later ask the AI whether a brand is okay to use or not, with a PDF that presumably contains “a list of brands to avoid” according to the prompt. This can literally be a Ctrl+f or something similar.

        I’m not going after anyone. Yes, we should be going after corporations, and not only for their environmental footprint, this doesn’t mean we can’t criticize other people.

        Plus, I really agree with the sentiment, as already stated. But, imo, this is not the right way to go.

        • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
          56·
          3 days ago

          May help if I clarify. The document is ingested into the chat, so acts as a local knowledge base. When I put some random brands into the llm it uses the info from the doc to respond.

          I probably could manually search the document (ctrl-f), just find it easier to use the llm approach, especially if inputting in an unstructured/messy way.

          • Renohren@lemmy.today
            3·
            3 days ago

            Does the llm search itself for subsidiaries of the brands on the PDF on the net? Because it could then be a good use of AI to find the one you stumble upon in the millions of brands big players have participation in…

            • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
              22·
              3 days ago

              not deliberately, however when run it did automatically identify a brand (Hellman’s) owned by a multinational NOT in the list (Unilever). I hadn’t included Unilever in the source doc as it is British/Dutch. So it must have used its own knowledge base.

              Perhaps it interpreted my preference as wishing to avoid multinationals? This is what it output:

              “Based on the list you provided and the document, here are the brands you should avoid if you are following the list:

              1. Doritos: Owned by PepsiCo.
              2. Tropicana: Owned by PepsiCo.
              3. Mentos: Owned by Perfetti Van Melle, not listed in your document, but worth noting.
              4. Hellmann’s: Owned by Unilever, not listed in your document, but worth noting.

              The other brands you mentioned are not listed in the document as brands to avoid. However, it’s always good to double-check with the latest information or packaging details, as brand ownership can change.”

        • derpgon@programming.dev
          34·
          2 days ago

          Are you a bot? You literally replied to a comment mentioning that umbrella corps are hard to find and requires a few minutes of searching, whereas an LLM already knows it.

          • Evotech@lemmy.world
            5·
            2 days ago

            I mean that’s true, but in this case, the OP downloaded a pdf with all the brands and umbrellas they wanted to avoid and gave it to the LLM.

            I agree that an AI could be more intuitive and easy to use.

            My point i guess is this is not something an AI just solves on its own and that you couldn’t solve without an AI

            • derpgon@programming.dev
              2·
              2 days ago

              Sure, the list had them already - but that doesn’t change the fact that more can be added manually, and some companies could split or buy others - in which case this info will be what the LLM brings to the table.

              You usually always start with a boilerplate and add into that. This is actually one of the few uses I really like.

        • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
          26·
          3 days ago

          yes you probably could just search ctrl+f. I’m quite lazy so imagined that if I could upload the document (46 pages PDF of companies and their brands), I could then just chat with the bot/or perhaps take a picture of a fridge/products and it could quickly give me the answer.

    • DioEgizio@lemm.ee
      171·
      3 days ago

      Yeah don’t get me wrong I use AI too when I need to get something done quickly but for things like that you can just search in the pdf

      • misterdoctor@lemmy.world
        8·
        3 days ago

        I think the benefit of AI here is that it can tell OP that Doritos is owned by PepsiCo. So, doing a ctrl-f for Doritos may not turn up results in the PDF. Using AI here would be to identify sub-brands that you might not even know were associated with a larger umbrella brand.

    • rooroo@feddit.org
      6·
      2 days ago

      Also, which AI is this? If people use ChatGPT to avoid evil companies I don’t know how to help them

      • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Yes Mistral. Not too sure about the brand other than they are French, so chose over OpenAI.

        Ultimate aim is to host my own local small model on phone or home server, but not quite there yet. Could then use for this and other purposes.

    • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      97·
      3 days ago

      Important perspective. Admittedly I use AI all the time for work so using it in other areas has become second nature (for bettter or worse!)

    • phampyk@lemmy.world
      23·
      2 days ago

      For something as simple as this you could selfhost your own AI on a moderately good computer/laptop, specially if it has a GPU (for speed) and that way you control the environmental cost of it.

      I’ve got my own hosted one at a really small scale for tagging bookmarks and I’m pretty happy with it.

      • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
        1·
        20 hours ago

        Yes, I plan to eventually have a home server where I can run things like this, and also stop relying on cloud services etc.

  • OrlandoDoom@feddit.ukEnglish
    252·
    2 days ago

    With AI, it might randomly forget stuff that is on the list, and it might randomly add to the list. Personally I wouldn’t rely on it

  • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    111·
    3 days ago

    I feel like having a csv (or any table) and searching that would have the same result, work offline, and be much less computationally intensive?

  • Zeppo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    13·
    3 days ago

    OK so here are some brands butter kiss twinning English breakfast tea Hovis seed sensations KP peanuts tonics, caramel wafers Mentos pure chewing gum Tropicana juice after eight mince Doritos mild salsa Hellmann’s mayonnaise Hellmans mustard Rubicon sparkling mango Vera Moretti, innocent

    Seems like more commas would help it interpret this list.

    • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      71·
      3 days ago

      Agreed. I was speaking into the phone while looking in the cupboard, and this was how it recorded it.

      • Zeppo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        71·
        3 days ago

        You could edit it before sending it. Seems like you’re putting a lot of faith in AI for some reason.

        • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Yes, the screenshot was the first time I used it. Will know to edit in future

      • VeganCheesecake@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        1·
        3 days ago

        I used to use dragon when I got tired of typing sometimes, so now I gotta stop myself from saying all the punctuation in my sentences out loud.

        But maybe try that, a lot of dictation software recognises it.

  • Symphonic@lemmy.world
    7·
    3 days ago

    That’s pretty neat! While I see the concern of not using AI for everything. These projects are good for practice and provide motivation. This in turn gives a sense of achievement and maybe lead to bigger things. That to me makes this worth it. Great job.

  • jlow (he/him)@beehaw.org
    9·
    3 days ago

    Can you post the PDF, please? As others have said I’d never use AI for ethical and environmental reasons but I’d love to be able to look up which brands to avoid.

    • Mobster@feddit.ukOPEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      not sure how to upload PDFs, sorry.

      Edit: turns out I can’t upload PDFs to lemmy.

      If you wanted to make a list yourself it’s a bit of a hassle but not too hard, I just searched for the Wikipedia pages for each of the following companies, type in something like “List of brands for [company name]”. The companies I picked were:

      1. General Mills
      2. The Coca-Cola Company
      3. Mondelez International
      4. Mars
      5. Procter & Gamble (P&G)
      6. PepsiCo
      7. Nestlé (not a US company, but have avoided for years)

      Once you have the page you can just select the list directly from the page, copy, and then paste into a text doc or something. You could then search from it, and add to it as well. It may be a bit untidy, but search should still work.

      Hope that helps, and sorry I couldn’t share the document directly and save you the hassle.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
    41·
    3 days ago

    Twinings English Tea should be avoided because it’s dogshit. Buy English English Tea. Nobody else seems to get it right.

  • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
    31·
    3 days ago

    I don’t get it. You’re making fun of the person using the spicy word predictor, right?