The artificial intelligence is called Philyra - and its developers and users agree on one thing: It is female. "I spent a lot of time with her and see the programme as a she , that makes it easier," perfumer David Apel says jokingly.
But of course artificial intelligence has neither consciousness nor gender. It s just a computer system, a network of artificial neurons, created to store, process, and recombine large amounts of data. It can t smell or analyse fragrances in the air. Nevertheless, Philyra is the new employee at fragrance manufacturer Symrise in New York.
"I trained her and now she s training me," says Apel, who has worked as a perfumer for 39 years. Philyra s artificial intelligence was developed through cooperation between Symrise and IBM Research.
At Dia dos Namorados on June 12, Brazilian Valentine s Day, Philyra s first creation hits the market. The perfume is aimed at millennials, people born in the 1980s or 1990s.
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David Apel, Perfumer at the company Symrise (IBM Research)
David Apple is not afraid that Artificial Intelligence will one day make him unemployed.
The fragrance library
Putting together a perfume works much like cooking a dish. According to Apel, about 1300 basic substances, also known as scent building blocks, are available to a perfumer.
These are partly synthetic fragrances and partly extracts from flowers, fruits, mosses and spices. A perfumer combines several ingredients and adapts the formula until a new and pleasing fragrance emerges.
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Philyra bases its knowledge on a database containing the composition of almost 1.7 million perfumes. She also knows in which country, age group and gender a fragrance has sold particularly well. "Between all these creations, she finds space - possibilities that no one has yet exhausted," Apel explains.
At the touch of a button, the computer system spits out new perfume formulas for a specific target group. A perfumer like Apel can then further refine these formulas.
Apel is not afraid that Philyra will take his job away. He sees it more as a collaboration between man and machine. "I get the chance to see perfume formulas that I would never have thought of myself," says Apel. Because knowledge and experience often pose as limits to creativity: "I tend to prefer certain ingredients and want to make a very specific kind of scent," he admits.
Philyra is more impartial in her approach. "It s universal," Achim Daub explains. He is a member of the Executive Board for Scent & Care at Symrise. "Dave, on the other hand, is an American, male, white, has lived in France, now lives in New York - and cultural preferences often get in the way."
More surprisingly, a sense of smell is not all that important in the perfume business, Daub says. "The perfumer who trained me then told me: I know what a perfume smells like when I know its composition . That s exactly what Philyra does."
