It takes time to formulate a fragrance — between six and 18 months of formulations and revisions and trials, according to The Verge, on top of the months or years required to cultivate the raw materials. But the U.S. tech startup Osmo hopes to upend the fragrance market with its "artificial olfactory intelligence," which it says can create new fragrances based on client prompts within just 48 hours.
Osmo's scent generation capabilities rely on digitizing scent into code and predicting the scents of different combinations of odor molecules, according to The Glossy. Their first scent, a "digitized plum," reportedly smells exactly like a plum, albeit stronger and perhaps a bit too perfect compared to scent extracted from a real plum.
But for clients who want to create and sell a limited-run fragrance, digitized scents and Osmo's proprietary technology may allow them to gain entry into the notoriously complex fragrance market. Just four fragrance conglomerates control most of the market, creating scents for perfumes, cleaning products, personal care products, and just about anything else that comes with a scent. And while those powerhouses incorporate AI into their processes to make fragrance compounding more efficient, the human perfumers remain in control of the creative process. The final product might be a sensory delight — but the final cost might be steep.
Osmo claims that its digitized scents and proprietary algorithms make it much easier and cheaper to compound shelf-stable and legally compliant fragrances in just about any quantity — the "democratization of scent." But many of Osmo's selling points are exactly what traditional perfumers and fragrance experts object to. A perfume's value, they say, is a reflection of the human expertise and labor, its connection with the natural world, and the time required to craft something that no one has ever smelled before.
Perhaps Osmo makes fragrance more accessible, but it will still have to contend with a skeptical market — especially within the luxury perfume niche. Matt Belanger, who co-owns luxury perfume retailer Stele, told the Verge that his team audits every brand stocked in his stores, and AI-created fragrance doesn't make the cut.
