Sunday 21 June 2020

aromachology

Having made forays into nearly all aspects of design, Weird Universe brings us the account of how a Brazilian cosmetics company approached IBM Artificial Intelligence Research to commission a pair of complementary, wholly machine-engineered (its collaboration was not completely unheard of but the help was solicited under human supervision for concocting, modelling new blends of existing fragrances).
Absent a robust dataset of aromas at the time, it turned to German fragrance clearing house with some two million formulรฆ of smell samples from household cleaners to toothpaste flavours and of course analysis of perfumes and colognes to train a program to compose unique inventions—called Philyra, the Thessalian goddess of beauty, healing, writing and perfume, credited with the invention of paper as well as the alphabet also mother to the Centaurs, owing to a visitation from Cronos in the form of a stallion. The neural network, free from human interference created some unique suggestions, resulting in at least two so far being brought to market.