Google AI is as reliable as a human at identifying smells from their chemical structure

Computer scientists at Google have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can describe what something will smell like by its chemical structure. It uses an'odour map' to visualise the indicative scents of a particular molecule, building on work from 2019 where the technology described scents using words. Points that represent similar odours appear close together on the map, which can be used to predict what a substance will smell like before humans have a sniff. 'The model is as reliable as a human in describing odor quality,' the researchers from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA wrote. They hope that the AI model could be used to identify new scents for fragrances, or flavour profiles in food formulation.