Is AI About to Revolutionize Fragrance?
Or are we living in Dot Com Bubble 2.0?
Velvet Sundown via NYPost
While Wall Street continues to cheerlead for AI, the technology clearly has significant downsides. Scientific papers and even books are littered with phony AI-generated references. Employers are swamped with AI-generated job applications and are fighting back with automated resume-sorting apps. A rock band named Velvet Sundown which is “wholly generated by artificial intelligence” just gained a million listeners on Spotify. A college education, which used to require reading assigned texts and writing term papers, is becoming four years of learning to optimize ChatGPT prompts. Even Substack itself is stuffed with AI-produced content.
Unsurprisingly, AI is also making a splash in the arcane world of perfume and fragrance. For example, a press release from International Flavors & Fragrances touts a new tool that uses “advanced semantic AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP)” to provide “valuable insights to help develop scents that people love”.
“The ScentChat™ tool was specifically developed to enable direct, real-time communication between consumers and fragrance creators via widely used platforms such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger,” said Valery Claude, senior vice president, Scent Innovation, Creation and Design.
ScentChat boils down to consumers instant messaging with an AI chat bot. Neato! But IFF will still need to get fragrance samples under consumer noses—through the mail or in a consumer panel session. And perfumers will remain separated from consumers by an intermediary. Instead of fragrance evaluators and consumer researchers, the intermediary will be an AI bot.
Meanwhile, IBM and L’Oreal are teaming up to apply “generative AI” technology to improve the “sustainability” of cosmetic formulations.
“This collaboration is a truly impactful application of generative AI, leveraging the power of technology and expertise for the good of the planet”, said Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, vice president Europe and Africa and Director IBM Research Zurich.
Yikes. So many buzz words saying so little.
Even humdrum scent marketing displays are pushing an AI angle. iRomaScents makes interactive touch-screens that spritz a scent sample after the user completes a brief questionnaire. The company’s “latest advancement” has “enhanced AI capabilities, providing an even more immersive and engaging shopping experience.”
You might think the emphasis on AI technology would detract from the central aspect of fine fragrance, namely its mystique as a luxury product. Not to worry! Thirty-year industry veteran Paul Houlsby is on it.
“Now, I am embarking on the most exciting chapter of my career—creating a pioneering luxury niche sustainable AI perfume system. In collaboration with dsm-firmenich, a global leader in fragrance and flavor creation, we are developing a groundbreaking system that effectively utilizes date [sic] and cutting-edge algorithms to create completely unique olfactive identities for each customer.”
In practical terms, this means perfume personalization. Houlsby and dsm-firmenich are
creating a system that allows customers to develop their own signature scents, tailored to their personal preferences. The process involves a series of evaluations, with data fed into an algorithm that refines the fragrance options until the perfect match is found.
Haven’t we seen personalized perfume ventures before? I recall a presentation by Procter & Gamble, back in the previous century, sponsored by The Fragrance Foundation in New York. The P&G rep would ask a few questions about someone’s preference for top, middle, and base notes, and then, using a suitcase-like collection of raw materials, blend a “unique” personalized fragrance on the spot. The goal was to automate the entire process so that P&G could sell personalized perfumes on a mass scale. It never went anywhere, but the pursuit of over-the-horizon projects was typical for P&G. They figured that any insights gained might pay off for other brands and projects.
When it comes to churning out bunkum about olfactory AI, the global leader is boy wonder and self-promoter par excellence Alex Wiltschko. (I wrote about him here.)
Wiltschko is a former Googler and now CEO of Osmo, a startup funded by $60 million from Lux Capital and GV (Google Ventures). Last month, he presented “Olfactory intelligence: How AI is digitizing our sense of smell”, as part of some World Economic Forum confab. According to Wiltschko, “Digitizing scent couldn’t have happened without artificial intelligence,” which now makes it possible for computers to “digitally record, analyze and reproduce” scents.
Digital reproduction of scents? Gee, that sounds familiar. Specifically, it was the pitch from DigiScents, circa 1999. I know, because I was there. What began as a miniaturized Smell-O-Vision unit plugged into your PC quickly expanded into a grandiose plan to establish the “RGB” parameters of smell in the form of computer code. We even hosted a group of P&G R&D people in Oakland—they came all the way from Cincinnati for a demo of our iSmell scent unit. (The meeting was a disaster, but that’s a story for another time.)
Wiltschko has now outdone himself by breathlessly launching Generation by Osmo.
Generation is a new fragrance house, backed by Osmo’s revolutionary Olfactory Intelligence (OI) technology.
We’ve dissolved the false boundary between technology and artistry, finding a more profound truth: that all scent, whether born of algorithm or inspiration, speaks to the same yearning — to capture fleeting moments and translate the ineffable into something desirable.
Inspiring! But what does it actually do?
Create custom scents for consumer products across beauty, personal care, and more. Launch your fragrance brand from scratch – no perfumery experience needed.
Nice. Now any idiot can start a fragrance brand!
Generation by Osmo requires no tedious meetings with sales people, no interaction with fragrance evaluators. Pick a scent, pick a bottle, and start selling your product. Wiltschko is thinking big—his new outfit just rented 58,000 square feet at an industrial park in Elizabeth, NJ.
A turnkey fragrance vendor? Something about this play sounds familiar. Back in 2001, Givaudan, my former employer, created GivaudanAccess.com. It was a (then novel) web-based service for small to mid-tier customers, who could select from a beautifully designed catalogue of off-the-shelf fragrances suitable for specific applications: hair care, skin care, soaps, etc. If I remember correctly, the customer could get a fragrance evaluator’s recommendation via email and even one modification of the selected fragrance. GivaudanAccess.com got positive reviews and even won a Fragrance Foundation FiFi Award, for “Technological Breakthrough of the Year” or something similar. It was a great idea that filled a market niche, but it didn’t last. Generation by Osmo looks like GivaudanAccess with AI.
Wiltschko has hired two industry veterans for his venture—mohawk-topped master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, and former dsm-Firmenich VP Florence Bagneris to run sales. [Why does a company that creates fragrance with AI need a master perfumer?—Ed.] [Stop asking awkward questions.] Who knows—maybe AI is the secret sauce that will give new life to some old ideas. Or maybe it’s just the slogan for this iteration of the the dot com mania of 1999 to 2001.