Using AI to Streamline Fragrance Discovery
Fragrances add interest, meaning, beauty, and sensual pleasure to our lives. Scents are integral to smelling and feeling good, whether in nature, toiletries, cosmetics, or perfumes. They evoke emotional, meaningful connections, therapeutic efficacy, and cultural significance. For producers, fragrance is a US$30 billion industry1.
Consumers expect perfumes to smell appealing, unique, and even unexpected. At the same time, we demand natural, cruelty-free, sustainable fragrance ingredients and personalized, culturally resonant products. However, with aromatics use dating back thousands of years and a well-saturated market, how can makers stay relevant, attractive, avant-garde, and socially conscious?
Beyond understanding consumer trends and constant research and development, fragrance developers increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) for insights and innovation. How is this exciting and capable technology helping to streamline fragrance discovery?
Embracing Data-Driven Decisions
The amount of consumer data available around aromatics can be overwhelming. Big data incorporates information characterized by volume, variety, and velocity. It’s also increasingly unstructured – including data, text, audio, and visual formats – requiring value, validity, and integrity filtering.
Without computer aid, sourcing, capturing, preprocessing, and analyzing this feedback would be challenging. Simultaneously, even traditional data processing software struggles.
Instead, AI-driven tools can collate, curate, and analyze data quickly and efficiently. Beyond being effective, the technology is expansive. It can reveal interdependencies between diverse actors, entities, and processes, uncovering otherwise hidden possibilities. They can yield valuable findings, conclusions, and insights in a fraction of the time and cost. Why are these insights essential?
Understanding consumer demands and trends and acting on them, even anticipating them, is critical to agility in meeting user needs, including personalized products, experiences, services, and support. Creators must stay well ahead of aromatics trends, revealing or predicting emerging styles and notes as far as two to five years in advance.
Guiding the Essence of Fragrance Development
With over 1200 new products launched annually, the fragrance industry is highly competitive. Developing odor profiles and creating novel fragrances is complex. It takes insight, experience, expertise, and intuition—a science and an art. The process is also lengthy. It can take up to 18 months to produce a scent from concept to final formula.
Smoothing and accelerating the process, AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of aromatics data, including consumer feedback, reviews, and even odors, based on molecular structure alone. Outcomes highlight preferred accords and notes and recommend ingredient combinations. This data guides makers on the type of fragrance to create and how to formulate, price, and market it to offer profoundly innovative, personalized, and targeted perfumes.
Incorporating AI into research and development saves perfumers time and cost. It helps avoid conventional trial-and-error approaches and promises a greater likelihood of success across a wider audience. AI-powered analytics also help drive sustainability by naming appropriate ingredients, “greener” and more ethical production, processes, packaging, and logistics.
Sourcing the Ingredients
Pure, safe, and naturally healthy elements are preferable. Unfortunately, sourcing these ingredients can cause unpalatable animal and environmental harm. Resources are also finite and often vulnerable, thanks to climate crises, over-harvesting, and geopolitical concerns.
Additionally, several factors can influence emerging odor trends, including elements as diverse as the ocean, the weather, daily activities, and food ingredient preferences. Molecules supplying these aromas may not be available organically. Moreover, some natural scents, such as strawberry aroma, are complex to derive naturally or challenging to produce in high enough concentrations.
Instead, consumer- and future-centric perfumers can rely on safe, healthy, customized synthetic aromatics produced using green chemistry and responsible technologies and techniques. Unlike many natural fragrance molecules, synthetic ingredients are also hypoallergenic.
Streamline Fragrance Discovery With Revolutionary AI and Advanced Biotech
Advanced Biotech’s collection of synthetic aromatics includes primary and base aromas to create or complement your fragrance profiles. We are also happy to collaborate on tailoring or customizing ingredients – almost any scent or odor combination is possible. Contact us today to request samples or place your order.
1 https://www.wired.com/story/this-startup-is-using-ai-to-unearth-new-smells/