At a pristine, multimillion-dollar lab on the Manhattan waterfront, just down the street from a men\u2019s homeless shelter and the medical examiner\u2019s office, a slice of summer plum is being converted into fragrance code. This is the work of Osmo, a fragrance tech startup claiming to build artificial olfactory intelligence. Osmo has parlayed this innovation into offering turnkey fragrance compounding that promises a 48-hour sample turnaround from initial client prompt. In the time it takes your Amazon Prime order to arrive, you may now order a custom perfume. <\/p>\n
Traditionally, creating a fragrance isn\u2019t fast. After a client provides a brief \u2014 usually a mood, memory, or concept \u2014 a perfumer begins weeks or months of formulation trials, compounding and revising dozens of modifications, or \u201cmods.\u201d Each must settle before it can be evaluated for balance, projection, and drydown. Raw materials often need years of cultivation. Bottling, regulatory reviews, packaging, and testing follow. From concept to shelf, a single perfume can take six to 18 months \u2014 even longer in luxury. And like fine wines, fragrance materials vary with climate concerns. One year\u2019s yield will not smell like the next one, or the one before. <\/p>\n
Osmo built its shiny new empire, hoping to disrupt the fragrance market, on its digitization of a plum and the speed with which it can analyze and transport odor molecules. Its goal: to disrupt the fragrance market with AI-powered scent creation. I first encountered the smell of this \u201cdigitized plum\u201d at a scent conference, handed to me by an independent perfumer like contraband. A group gathered around the blotter, whispering: it was too medicinal, too clean. \u201cWhere\u2019s the bruising, the rot \u2014 the heat?\u201d someone asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere\u2019s the craftsmanship? Where\u2019s the perfumer?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve judged hundreds of perfumes blindly for international fragrance awards and worked on machine learning systems at tech startups. I know the pull of scent well formulated \u2014 and the allure of tech\u2019s frictionless promises. To me, the plum smelled real, if strangely large and genetically modified. I could smell it from yards away \u2014 James and the Giant Plum, rolling toward me from a Roald Dahl retelling. But the question hanging in the air was larger than a fruit: as AI enters perfumery, are we expanding access to beauty \u2014 or automating the soul out of it?<\/p>\n
AI isn\u2019t coming to fragrance \u2014 it\u2019s already here, and in most things that the average consumer smells. The four fragrance conglomerates responsible for most of what the world smells \u2014 DSM-Firmenich, Givaudan, IFF, and Symrise \u2014 all integrate AI into their pipelines. Givaudan\u2019s Carto system helps perfumers refine formulas. DSM-Firmenich\u2019s EmotiON claims to produce scents that improve well-being. These systems are used not just in product labs but in fragrance education worldwide. The hairsprays and soaps and cleaning products and luxury fragrances that line your shelves \u2014 all of these have been touched by these four powerhouses of perfume and, so too, the AI involved in their processes. The principal perfumer at DSM-Firmenich, Frank Voelkl, who is behind the fragrances that make up so much of our current odor aura \u2014 Le Labo\u2019s Santal 33, Glossier\u2019s You, Tom Ford\u2019s Tuscan Leather \u2014 uses AI on a daily basis as part of his creative process. \u201cWhen I began as a perfumer, there were no emails \u2014 we were still communicating with fax machines, you know. I started by handwriting my formulas. The beauty of AI is that it manages regulatory concerns, issues around stability, phasing, performance. These tools are tremendously helpful in resolving technical issues so I can focus much more on the creative part, which requires my imagination, emotions, intuition, and the human factor. It\u2019s like a clerk.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heather, a perfumer-in-training in France, tells me AI use is now standard among her peers. \u201cMost, if not all my classmates, have used AI for every project or question. Gen Z uses it like an operating tool \u2014 older generations use it like a browser.\u201d When Heather says Gen Z uses AI \u201clike an operating tool,\u201d she means they rely on it as a functional extension of the creative process \u2014 from selecting materials to refining accords. Older generations, meanwhile, still treat it as a secondary resource, like a search engine or inspiration board. For new creators, AI isn\u2019t just assistance \u2014 it\u2019s infrastructure, taking over essential parts of the perfumery processes. <\/p>\n
Pierre Vouard, a professor at FIT, sees both opportunity and loss: \u201cCompounding by hand, knowing the exact amount of each material, weighing it yourself \u2014 that\u2019s going to disappear. But is it crucial?\u201d He knows AI is used in his own classroom. \u201cPerhaps this will be true democratization of fragrance because it drastically reduces the cost of creating one. But it does make you ask: Where\u2019s the craftsmanship? Where\u2019s the perfumer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019ve only been about 100,000 fragrances ever made. I want there to be millions.\u201d<\/p>\n
That question concerns perfumer Michael Nordstrand, too. \u201cAI-based fragrance companies are circumventing professionals and targeting people who don\u2019t know how to assess a scent beyond \u2018yes or no.\u2019 And they won\u2019t say what datasets or formulas they\u2019re using.\u201d He adds that Osmo, despite repeated requests, has declined to clarify what metrics or creative works are behind its models. Osmo declined to answer these questions with specific metrics when I asked, too, stating only that it is \u201cstill currently developing the system.\u201d While Osmo champions the work of its head perfumer, Christophe Laudamiel, it has declined to provide names of any other perfumers within its ecosystem. <\/p>\n
In 1995, just under 400 new fragrances launched globally. In 2023, the number exceeded 3,000. Osmo\u2019s founder, Alex Wiltschko, wants that number to grow exponentially. \u201cThere\u2019ve only been about 100,000 fragrances ever made. I want there to be millions,\u201d he tells me. \u201cNew tools are an important part of increasing the amount of beauty in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n
But growth comes at a cost \u2014 especially an environmental one. When I ask about energy use, Wiltschko says Osmo\u2019s graph neural networks consume far less power than models like ChatGPT. \u201cIt\u2019s vanishingly small,\u201d he says. \u201cWe don\u2019t need data centers. Our graph neural network model takes under an hour to train, compared to months for the world\u2019s largest LLMs right now.\u201d Yet he also says Osmo doesn\u2019t track the energy consumption of its systems at all, and the company declined to share life cycle assessment tests to compare to traditional fragrance house reports. <\/p>\n
So which is it \u2014 low enough to ignore, or too opaque to report?<\/p>\n
The reality is: most consumers have no idea how much AI is already embedded in their beauty products, or the energy it is costing us all. And the mystery around it is growing. Some indie brands, like House of Bo, are even using deepfake AI videos to simulate founder messages to customers \u2014 without disclosing it. \u201cI feel condescended to,\u201d says LC James, a fragrance consultant. \u201cIt hides the labor \u2014 and the environmental cost.\u201d Some online retailers go further still. Perfumer Teddy Haugen has had his likeness used without his consent in multiple advertisements for perfumes he wasn\u2019t involved in. He shows me videos he never filmed, where his voice patterns were replaced with someone else\u2019s, the words coming out of his artificially smoothed face \u2014 things he\u2019s never spoken, for perfumes he\u2019s never smelled. The number of unauthorized videos continues to grow. <\/p>\n
Perfume\u2019s origins lie far from data centers. Orris root takes years to cure before it\u2019s ready for formulation. Sandalwood also takes years to be ready for cultivation. Natural materials must be harvested, aged, blended. AI compounding labs like Osmo can ship a custom sample within two days. That frictionless speed, while exciting, risks further detachment from the raw, physical world beauty emerges from. <\/p>\n
St\u00e9le, a New York City fragrance retailer, sees that tension firsthand. \u201cWe\u2019re often being misled,\u201d says Matt Belanger, co-owner of the stores. \u201cSome brands say they\u2019re perfumer-led but are really using generators to copy existing work. What we love about fragrance is that it takes time, courage, and power to decide on your journey. That\u2019s different from pushing a button and getting something quickly.\u201d Jake Levy, his partner in life and at St\u00e9le, adds, \u201cSo many people work with companies that are just a robot and a receptionist. If brands were simply transparent about the usage, we\u2019d respect it far more.\u201d The St\u00e9le team regularly audits the backgrounds of every brand they stock. \u201cIf we don\u2019t take the reins and start having a conversation about the place of AI in perfumery,\u201d warns Nordstrand, \u201cthen it\u2019s going to get away from us \u2026 It\u2019s like Jurassic Park. We were so busy thinking about whether we could, no one stopped to ask if we should.\u201d<\/p>\n