Oui, he knows of several fragrance companies that use AI. And oui, he’s smelled some of those creations. He remains unimpressed. “So far, I haven’t seen anything unusual, daring, or striking,” he says. “Without the human, all you get is a blend.” Another analogy: “If you told a machine you like blue, red, and pink, and then you asked the machine [for a painting], you would never get a Mondrian!”
— Francis Kurkdjian on artificial intelligence in perfumery. Read more in Robots Are Coming For Your Beauty Collection — Is the fragrance industry ready for artificial intelligence? Are you? at Elle. Hat tip to Kevin!
Great read and loved how it ended…”Humans have moods and emotions; they’re fascinating—and unpredictable.” Much like a great perfume.” Not ready for a Matrix world myself but alas, it may not be able to avoid.
There are always pros and cons with technology. However, true, human connection cannot be replaced completely by AI without the continued, underlining negative effects on a social level, in my opinion. While technology expands variants and advancements on many levels, I am also weary of the ever growing tunnel vision that perhaps arises with it. Often unnoticed perhaps because it doesn’t seem blatantly obvious right away, rather, smaller incremental changes over time. And if it was becoming obvious, well I must go online and research it until the feeling subsides. The human thread may thin a little more day by day. Until maybe, one day, the wind catches it..and it simply disappears into the atmosphere..and by then, we may have accepted it. Then who are we?
Call me a traditionalist(while I am posting on a social media platform, however:)) and have a bot whip me up a scent accordingly. Why have a human make perfume? Why read a book when you can watch the movie? Why make my own decisions when I can have a bot tell me how I feel and what to do? Codependency on technology rather than on humans, seems infallible, right? Afterall, that is what a bot told me:). The probability of the bot being wrong rather than the human, surely is lower:). Or it will be, eventually.
I can’t argue with your concerns, but in the world of commercial mainstream perfume, there isn’t a whole lot of unusual, daring, or striking anyway, and it’s not all that common in niche either. If AI shakes things up a bit, it might help the bored humans making the next fruity floral flanker…
Given the abysmal state of mass market perfumery, it surely can’t do any worse.