J.M. Smucker to remove artificial food dyes by end-2027
June 26 (Reuters) - Jif peanut butter maker J.M. Smucker (SJM.N), opens new tab said on Thursday it would remove synthetic food colors from all consumer food products by the end of 2027.
The company said this move would impact its sugar-free fruit spreads, ice cream toppings as well as some sweet baked goods from its Hostess brand portfolio.
J.M. Smucker said majority of its products currently available to K-12 schools do not contain any artificial colors, and is working with distribution partners to stop selling products with synthetic dyes to K-12 schools by the 2026-2027 school year.
Packaged food makers, including Conagra Brands (CAG.N), opens new tab and General Mills (GIS.N), opens new tab, have been committing to eliminate the use of artificial colors from their product categories as they align themselves with the plans of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to remove synthetic food dyes from the U.S. food supply.
Earlier this month, Kraft Heinz (KHC.O), opens new tab also said it would stop launching new products containing artificial colors in the U.S. and plans to remove synthetic dyes from existing items by the end of 2027.
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The Guardian
12 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Group of high-profile authors sue Microsoft over use of their books in AI training
A group of authors has accused Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated books to create an artificial intelligence model, the latest allegation in the long legal fight over copyrighted works between creative professionals and technology companies. Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its Megatron AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training. The authors requested a court order blocking Microsoft's infringement and statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work that Microsoft allegedly misused. Generative artificial intelligence products like Megatron produce text, music, images and videos in response to users' prompts. To create these models, software engineers amass enormous databases of media to program the AI to produce similar output. The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an AI product that gives text responses to user prompts. The complaint said Microsoft used the pirated dataset to create a 'computer model that is not only built on the work of thousands of creators and authors, but also built to generate a wide range of expression that mimics the syntax, voice, and themes of the copyrighted works on which it was trained'. Spokespeople for Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. An attorney for the authors declined to comment. The complaint against Microsoft came a day after a California federal judge ruled that Anthropic made fair use under US copyright law of authors' material to train its AI systems but may still be liable for pirating their books. It was the first US decision on the legality of using copyrighted materials without permission for generative AI training. The day the complaint against Microsoft was filed, a California judge ruled in favor of Meta in a similar dispute over the use of copyrighted books used to train its AI models, though he attributed his ruling more to the plaintiffs' poor arguments than the strength of the tech giant's defense. Tech companies have argued that they make fair use of copyrighted material to create new, transformative content, and that being forced to pay copyright holders for their work could hamstring the burgeoning AI industry. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said that the creation of ChatGPT would have been 'impossible' without the use of copyrighted works.
The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Has Big Brother arrived? Trump's secret effort to gather government data on millions
The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike. The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk's DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents. In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to 'stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,' a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government. To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government's longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel. 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'By supporting Trump's administration, Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and are in violation of Palantir's Code of Conduct,' the employees wrote. Previous reporting from CNN and WIRED has described efforts at the Department of Homeland Security to build mass data tools to support tracking and surveilling undocumented immigrants, a key priority for the White House as deportations still aren't reaching levels necessary to meet Trump's promise of rapidly removing millions of people from the country. The effort has involved merging data from outside agencies like Social Security and the IRS, according to WIRED . 'They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,' a senior DHS official told the magazine. 'It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS, as well as voter data.' Since Trump took office, DOGE operatives, many of whom are unknown to the public nor have been vetted, have rapidly sought access to data at key agencies, including the Departments of Education and the Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration, often over the objections of senior staff. DOGE efforts to access data at agencies like the Treasury have prompted pushback from staff and lawsuits (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved) The efforts have prompted scores of lawsuits against DOGE. At Social Security, the administration also moved thousands of living, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants into the agency's 'Death Master File' in an attempt to pressure them to leave the country. DOGE itself is reportedly under audit for its action by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog. An April letter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned of DOGE's 'extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude' toward sensitive data. 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The Independent
19 minutes ago
- The Independent
Protesters blockade Palantir's offices calling for an end to ‘totalitarian police surveillance' as tech company aids ICE deportations
Protesters blockaded the offices of Peter Thiel 's data company Palantir on Thursday, calling for it to stop building surveillance systems for ICE and working with the Israeli military. Between 130 and 200 demonstrators chanted and banged drums outside the firm's building in Palo Alto, California, blocking the street and climbing on top of large box trucks that had been parked by Palantir in front of the entrance. In New York City, six people were arrested after police broke up a protest at Palantir's Manhattan office. A crowd of about 35 linked arms to bar access to the building, at one point briefly entering the lobby, while another 20 or so people gathered in support. "This is a billion dollar company that is profiting from and enabling ICE that are separating our families," 27-year-old Marcus Romero of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) told the crowd in Palo Alto. "Today, Palantir and the Trump administration are targeting immigrants. Tomorrow, it'll be anyone who disagrees with the MAGA agenda." A spokesperson for Palantir clarified that the trucks were hired for an event and were unrelated to the protest, but otherwise declined to comment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment. Palantir's stock has soared by more than 250 percent since the 2024 election as it takes an increasingly central role in President Donald Trump's push for "mass deportations", earning a reported $113m through new and existing contracts. Founded in 2003, with backing from arch-conservative Peter Thiel and the CIA, Palantir sells data-crunching services to companies, government agencies, intelligence services, and militaries. Its name comes from the all-seeing crystal balls used by Sauron's forces in Lord of the Rings. 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The demonstration in Palo Alto was lively but peaceable, featuring drums, an amplified electric guitar, a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty, 'Stop AI' activists warning about the coming machine apocalypse, and no arrests. The Independent counted around 130 to 140 people in attendance, while organizers estimated roughly 250 had come and gone over the course of the event. After blocking the street outside Palantir's unassuming redbrick office, and briefly making way for an ambulance, the crowd marched to a nondescript building nearby where organizers said the company was holding a developer conference to recruit new talent, slapping rhythmically on the windows and chanting "quit your jobs!" "We shut their s*** down! They left! It's an abandoned event space right now," one organizer announced soon afterwards, to wild cheers. "Our intel tells us that... one of the most important things we can do to hurt Palantir right now is disrupting their recruitment pipeline by hurting their brand image, to the point where even very apolitical recent college graduates [feel] that it's social suicide." Laila Ali, an organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, led the crowd in chants of 'free, free Palestine!', while another — a dissident Google employee going by the alias 'Jam' — described Palantir as part of an effort by tech moguls to build "a totalitarian police surveillance state at a scale unprecedented in human history". "The oligarchs see Trump's authoritarian tendencies, his deep disinterest in the truth, his vanity and his naked corruption, and they see their chance to ride the wave of fascism with the resources of history's most powerful economic and military empire, the United States," Jam said. "They need this surveillance state because they also see another holy grail on the horizon. They believe that generative AI can realize a fantasy that they have dreamt of for centuries: a perfectly obedient workforce that they don't have to argue with, that doesn't pester them with basic needs." Although Palantir did not confirm whether its event was disrupted, one visibly confused event worker did try to deliver equipment, only to find their intended recipients had vanished. In New York, things got spicier. Caroline Chouinard, a Brooklyn resident who was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, told The Guardian that police had begun arresting people before giving them a chance to disperse, and that people identifying themselves as Palantir employees had tried to physically push past the demonstrators into the building. "From NYC to LA to Gaza, Palantir is one company making unspeakable horrors happen. We need to shut them down. I do not want this vile stain on my communities," she said.
