A cousin of Watson has accomplished an even finer task: creating perfumes. Soon, these AI-invented perfumes will go on sale in about 4,000 locations in Brazil.
Fragrances have traditionally been created by sought-after perfumers. But Symrise, a German fragrance company with clients including Avon and Coty, recently struck a deal with IBM to see how its AI tools could be used to modernize the process.
IBM created an algorithm — its name is Philyra, according to Datanami — that studies fragrance formulas and customer data, then spits out new perfumes inspired by those training materials.
The first result of the collaboration are two scents, and the AI-invented perfumes will soon go on sale at O Boticário, a prominent Brazilian beauty chain.
It’s a sure sign, though, that AI creations are starting to leak out into the world of consumer products — and next time you sniff a sampler, it’s possible that it wasn’t formulated by a human at all.