There are people in the world whose jobs are to concoct fragrances used for perfumes, detergent, and so on. We imagine that it’s probably not an easy task trying to determine what kind of combinations work, and whether or not they’ll be appealing, but IBM thinks that they might be able to lend a hand.
IBM Research has developed an AI that can help create fragrances. This is thanks to a collaboration with Symrise, one of the top producers in the world for flavors and fragrances, where the AI will be able to learn about formulas, raw materials that go into creating fragrances, historical data, industry trends, and more, all of which that will go towards it being able to come up with combinations that can help fill gaps in the market.
Dubbed Philyra (named after the Greek goddess of perfume and beauty) and according to IBM, “It is a system that uses new and advanced machine learning algorithms to sift through hundreds of thousands of formulas and thousands of raw materials, helping identify patterns and novel combinations. Philyra does more than serve up inspiration – it can design entirely new fragrance formulas by exploring the entire landscape of fragrance combinations to discover the whitespaces in the global fragrance market.”
Now this isn’t to say that AI will be replacing human master perfumers anytime soon, but rather the use of AI will help these perfumers come up with ideas for future products at a much faster rate than before.