Following the big launch of the latest pillar by Paco Rabanne, we received more interesting info about the creation, inspiration, and futuristic direction of the newest fragrance PHANTOM. Paco Rabanne's team developed PHANTOM with the perfumers, scientists, and technicians of the International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF) company, using the company's state-of-the-art Augmented Creativity process. With PHANTOM, every aspect of perfume creation has been reinvented by next-generation technologies developed for IFF. Thanks to neurosciences, algorithmic tools, and artificial intelligence, our perfumers have been able to push back their creative boundaries. How do you use neurosciences in perfumery?

Perfumes may smell like raspberries or jasmine but, paradoxically, fragrances are the last frontier of natural beauty products. Unlike skin care, hair care, and cosmetics -- which chemists can formulate entirely with botanically derived ingredients, rather than synthetics -- the perfume industry has been fueled by the exact opposite: synthetic mimicry of natural ingredients. When you smell lavender or rose in a perfume, maybe 90 percent of the time what you're actually smelling is a linalool or geranyl acetate compound, lab-made replicas of the flowers in bloom. It's been that way since the late 1800s, when synthetic aromatic molecules were introduced. For the first time, precious scents were available at prices that the rising middle class could afford.

Artificial intelligence programs are gradually becoming part of the perfume development process. In what way does perfumers' work engage with these new methods? How can we reconcile this rational, mathematical approach with a creative process requiring sensitivity and subjectivity? Is the future of perfumers at risk? Jean-Christophe Hérault, senior perfumer at IFF, explains the implications of what is sometimes referred to as a revolution, while reminding us of the importance of human intuition. What do artificial intelligence programs used in fragrance creation consist of?

Do you need a human to create a beautiful scent? That's the question being asked as artificial intelligence (AI) starts to infiltrate the perfume industry. Companies are increasingly turning to technology in order to create more bestselling, unique fragrances that can be produced in just minutes. Last year, Swiss-based fragrance developer Givaudan Fragrances launched Carto, an artificial Intelligence-powered tool to help perfumers. Through machine learning (a way computers improve outcomes automatically by learning from past results) Carto can suggest combinations of ingredients.

The art of making perfumes and colognes hasn't 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.

Google has its own perfume--or at least one team of the company's researchers does. Crafted under the guidance of expert French perfumers, the mixture has notes of vanilla, jasmine, melon, and strawberries. "It wasn't half bad," says Alex Wiltschko, who keeps a vial of the perfume in his kitchen. Google's not marketing that scent anytime soon, but it is sticking its nose into yet another aspect of our lives: smell. On Thursday, researchers at Google Brain released a paper on the preprint site Arxiv showing how they trained a set of machine-learning algorithms to predict molecules' smell based on their structures.

In the last year, the scent industry has undergone a quiet but significant transformation thanks to artificial intelligence: In August 2018, fragrance house Firmenich announced a partnership with Swiss university Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne to create a digital lab in order to study AI for fragrance product development. In October 2018, another major fragrance house, Symrise, worked with IBM to develop an AI and machine learning perfumer machine called Phylra. This past April, fragrance company Givaudan launched AI platform Carto to assist perfumers in scent creation. And finally, in July, fragrance subscription startup Scentbird launched a sub-brand called Confessions of a Rebel that used AI and customer data and reviews in the creation of its four debut fragrances. Historically, perfume creation has toed the line between art and science.

While it's not unimportant, a lot of the groundwork when developing a new fragrance is done by evaluating data, and that's something artificial intelligence is highly qualified to do. In a partnership between IBM Research and Symrise, a global producer of fragrances and flavors based in Germany with clients such as Estee Lauder, Donna Karan, Avon, Coty and more, the first AI-developed scent is now available for purchase in Brazil. Philyra became the artificial intelligence (AI) apprentice IBM created that perfumer David Apel worked alongside to create two new fragrances for Brazilian cosmetics company O Boticário in time for the country's Valentine's Day holiday this year. They were specifically looking for a fragrance to sell to Generation Z and millennials who they knew would be intrigued by a fragrance created by AI. This collaboration officially launched AI into the fragrance industry.

While it's not unimportant, a lot of the groundwork when developing a new fragrance is done by evaluating data, and that's something artificial intelligence is highly qualified to do. In a partnership between IBM Research and Symrise, a global producer of fragrances and flavors based in Germany with clients such as Estee Lauder, Donna Karan, Avon, Coty and more, the first AI-developed scent is now available for purchase in Brazil. Philyra became the artificial intelligence (AI) apprentice IBM created that perfumer David Apel worked alongside to create two new fragrances for Brazilian cosmetics company O Boticário in time for the country's Valentine's Day holiday this year. They were specifically looking for a fragrance to sell to Generation Z and millennials who they knew would be intrigued by a fragrance created by AI. This collaboration officially launched AI into the fragrance industry.

This summer, furniture company Kartell will start selling a new plastic chair designed by Philippe Starck – with some help. The system used – not, perhaps, strictly an AI – was a generative design software platform from Autodesk. Supplied with initial design goals, along with parameters such as materials, manufacturing methods and cost constraints, the software explores all the possible permutations of a solution to generate design alternatives. It tests and learns from each iteration what works and what doesn't. "As the relationship between the two matured, the system became a much stronger collaborative partner, and began to anticipate Starck's preferences and the way he likes to work," says Mark Davis, senior director of design futures at Autodesk.