'With artificial intelligence we boycott US products'

COPENHAGEN - The form of protest is not new: targeting a country in its economic interests, avoiding the purchase of products produced or owned by it. Nor is the recipient new: the United States, already the subject of boycotts on repeated and even relatively recent historical occasions. What is new in the anti-American protest that has united several Nordic countries since last year against the trade policies of the second Trump presidency and, even more so, against the expansionist aims towards Greenland are the technological tools, which today can also rely on artificial intelligence.

Narrating its genesis is Ian Rosenfeldt, creator of Made O'Meter, the first Danish app that allows you to scan and define, thanks to AI, whether a product is American or not.

'I work in a digital marketing company and deal with business development,' he says. 'I was experimenting with the capabilities of AI to recognise products without using barcodes when US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada. And I thought, together with many Danes, Mexicans and Canadians, that it was really unfair. So I joined a boycott group on Facebook to see what could be done, because it is quite difficult to boycott something when you don't know how to get the information about a product. In fact, the barcode only tells us the last link in the chain of ownership. So I remembered that I had been doing these experiments with AI and I thought it could help me with that, taking the image of a product and telling me not only who produces and distributes it, but it could also do an in-depth search to find out who actually owns the brand, who makes money out of me buying it.

Thus was born, in March last year, Made O'Meter, a private initiative of Rosenfeldt outside his entrepreneurial activity (he is co-founder of InboundCPH, ndr) and without commercial purposes, since the app is downloadable and usable (also via the web) for free and even involves costs, to the extent that support is requested from users and sympathisers.

Put back on the market after two or three months to correct inaccuracies that compromised the effectiveness of the first version, the app now allows - Rosenfeldt gives a practical demonstration of this during the interview - to take a picture of a product or enter its name, getting back the information requested and also the alternatives available on the market.