How Beauty Brands Are Leveraging AI to Develop Skincare and Fragrance Products

The innovative fragrance company, Generation by Osmo, founded in 2023, is leveraging AI to transform the fragrance industry through a concept known as “olfactive intelligence” (OI). Led by Alex Wiltschko, the company aims to “digitize scent” by creating molecular codes for natural scents that can be replicated without physical ingredients. With their dual-phase device, a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, they have successfully reverse-engineered scents, like that of a plum, and digitally encoded and reprinted them.

Osmo is not just replicating existing scents but also introducing entirely new molecules, such as glossine, fractaline, and quasarine, through AI, predicting how they might smell and testing for safety.

As the beauty industry increasingly adopts AI-driven formulations, other companies are also exploring this frontier. The Good Face Project, for instance, uses AI to streamline cosmetic development, though it currently focuses on existing ingredients. Meanwhile, Debut is using AI for new molecule discovery in skincare.

AI’s role in the industry includes speeding up development processes and reducing manual labor, but human expertise, especially in creative tasks, remains crucial. As AI tools become more common, they’re transforming the production landscape, though AI’s relationship with human creativity in beauty remains complex and evolving.