Written By: BOSS Editorial
Reading Time: 5 minutes
Get a whiff of this: By sticking its nose into fragrance, AI is changing the perfume industry. The ancient artisanal processes of scent manufacturing may be part of a romanticized past, but their essences cling to us with every dab beneath an earlobe or gentle burst from an atomizer. Now, a chatbot can make finding a new fragrance online a reality.
Getting customers to buy perfume without smelling it first has been the major hurdle in the growth of manufacturers’ e-commerce aspirations. Jo Malone’s Scent Advisor uses AI to translate senses, emotion, and experiences into purchases.
“We are entering a new era of digital scent discovery where AI can bridge the gap between curiosity and confidence,” said Jo Dancey, Global Brand President, Jo Malone London when announcing the tool in late 2025. The Estée Lauder Companies – owners of the Jo Malone brands – used their AI and Innovation teams to blend proprietary data, brand expertise and Google Cloud’s AI capabilities to add a much-needed new dimension of flexibility when choosing fragrances beyond the bricks and mortar experience.
“With the launch of our AI Scent Advisor, we’re strengthening the way consumers explore scents, bringing the Jo Malone spirit of curiosity and creativity to online fragrance discovery,” Dancey added. “This smart advisor lets people describe in their own words what they’re drawn to and translates that into meaningful, tailored scent recommendations. It’s designed to feel like having one of our fragrance experts at your side, wherever you are.”
Scent Advisor’s AI tools use a blend of olfactory data and natural conversational tone to mirror the luxury retail experience and create a digital twin of physical consultations by a Jo Malone fragrance stylist. Emotional tone does a fair degree of heavy lifting in replicating the in-store “immersive journey,” using evocative imagery to help consumers connect with a scent’s heritage and that “special something” that leads them to prefer one scent over another.
Digital-first shopping isn’t new; many consumers appreciate the convenience, selection, and ease of payment it provides. When it comes to selecting the perfume that speaks to personality and social goals, online interactions must be rooted in storytelling and human aspirations. Advanced AI makes it possible to accurately assess and map emotional responses to smells and to use the power of personal experience and culture to interweave the technology, physiology, and psychology needed to create a digital shopping experience.
Justifying investments in generative AI has been a challenge for companies across many industries, but Scent Advisor is beating that charge with a clear top-line outcome for Estée Lauder. Buyers who used it converted at nearly double the rate of those who didn’t. The company’s fragrance division is now the fastest-growing segment, with fragrance sales increasing by 13% year-over-year. Jo Malone’s targeted expanded reach is a meaningful contributor to this success.
Creating the sweet smell of success
For decades fragrance making has been highly automated, from formulation to filling, packaging, and labeling. That level of mechanization hasn’t touched the art and science of actually creating scents – until now.
Crafting new fragrances commonly relies on elite perfumers with a formidable depth of knowledge and expertise. It’s difficult work that’s time consuming and labor intensive even for the very best in the field. Smells are subjective, and a final product can be variable or inconsistent, so the trial and error associated with getting the desired outcome make it hard to scale, and slow down innovation.
To alleviate these challenges, a research team led by Professor Takamichi Nakamoto at the Institute of Science Tokyo has developed an AI model called Odor Generative Diffusion (OGDiffusion). This model utilizes generative diffusion networks, a type of machine learning model that learns to create new content by reversing a noise process informed by existing data. These models are already widely employed to generate images and text, and the team has adapted this technology to create new fragrances.
“Our diffusion network uses patterns in mass spectrometry data of essential oils to generate new fragrance profiles in a fully automated, streamlined, and data-driven approach while maintaining high-quality data output. By eliminating human intervention and molecular synthesis from the process, we provide a fast, general, and efficient method for fragrance generation,” Nakamoto explained.
There are other AI-based fragrance generation models, but they depend on proprietary datasets and still require human input. OGDiffusion automates the creation of new scents completely. Because the system produces fragrances based on essential oil recipes, the scents can be faithfully reproduced.
To learn whether the AI-generated fragrances matched the intended scent profiles, the team conducted double-blind human sensory tests. Fourteen participants were tasked with matching AI-generated fragrances to descriptors such as “citrusy” or “floral.” They were consistently able to identify the correct fragrance.
In another test, the team discovered that the model generates clear and identifiable scent profiles. The study participants were asked to distinguish between two scents: one designed to express an additional specific odor and an original scent without it. They selected the scent that matched the target descriptor every time.
“This approach represents a significant advancement in aroma design,” Nakamoto stated. “By automating the generation of mass spectra corresponding to desired odor profiles, the OGDiffusion network offers a more efficient and scalable method for fragrance creation. Moreover, even a novice can create an intended scent to make scented digital contents.”
In streamlining the discovery and initial formulation process, OGDiffusion will open up a new era in fragrance creation and provide abundant opportunities for brands like Jo Malone London to become more innovative and competitive. No doubt that perfumeries – and their investors – are bound to find that scent simply irresistible.
