This start-up wants to use artificial intelligence to create new smells
A US start-up Osmo has developed an AI that has its own sense of smell, so to speak. Artificial intelligence should help to create new smells.
In recent years, computers have developed into true all-rounders. They already use many of our senses. Machines can already see through cameras and feel their environment through sensors. Up until now, however, it has not really been possible to teach a computer the concept of smell. At least until now.
Because the company Osmo developed from the research area Google Research. The goal of the start-up is to use artificial intelligence to create the perfect scents for shampoos, lotions and candles in the coming years.
Today’s fragrances are mostly made from plants or animals. But this is a circumstance that is becoming more and more prone to failure due to climate change.
Smells: This artificial intelligence can smell
The artificial fragrances should not only smell just as good or better than their herbal counterparts, they should also be biodegradable and suitable for allergy sufferers. Research on humans shows how complex the system is for a computer.
Because we have around 400 different types of receptors that pick up smells, encode them and send them to our brain. To give the AI a chance, the team fed an algorithm with data on 5,000 different odor molecules.
In addition to the structure, the data also contained information on how people absorb the smell. Then they asked the artificial intelligence how molecules that have not yet been produced would smell.
Osmo: AI approaches human sense of smell
At the same time, the researchers produced the smells from these molecules and asked human subjects for their opinions. Even if opinion is subjective, the computer model was able to guess the odor inhaled by humans about 53 percent of the time.
So our sense of smell can, to a certain extent, be calculated by a machine. However, the system still has some limitations. Because minimal changes in the molecules can lead to major changes for humans or machines without the other side noticing.
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