This Is Why A.I. Has Yet to Reshape Most Businesses
For many companies, deploying A.I. is slower and more expensive than it might seem
By Brian Bergstein
The art of making perfumes and changed much since the 1880s, when synthetic ingredients began to be used. Expert fragrance creators tinker with combinations of chemicals in hopes of producing compelling new scents. So Achim Daub, an executive at one of the world’s biggest makers of fragrances, Symrise, wondered what would happen if he injected artificial intelligence into the process. Would a machine suggest appealing formulas that a human might not think to try?
Daub hired IBM to design a computer system that would pore over massive amounts of information — the formulas of existing fragrances, consumer data, regulatory information, on and on — and then suggest new formulations for particular markets. The system is called Philyra, after the Greek goddess of fragrance. Evocative name aside, it can’t smell a thing, so it can’t replace human perfumers. But it gives them a head start on creating something novel.
Daub is pleased with progress so far. Two fragrances aimed at young customers in Brazil are due to go on sale there in June. Only a few of the company’s 70 fragrance designers have been using the system, but Daub expects…
