A group of scientists have made a staggering breakthrough.
While 'smell teleportation' might sound like Dr. Farnsworth's Smell-O-Scope from Futurama, it turns out its not just some fanciful idea from a cartoon. It's not only The Simpsons that can predict the future, with Futurama also giving us a glimpse into the world of tomorrow. Imagine perusing a catalogue of fragrances, able to smell the latest sample of Tom Ford without actually having to go to the shop. Artificial intelligence is apparently responsible for making smell teleportation a reality, as one company has made a 'futuristic' breakthrough. Now, there might be no reason to wonder what space smells like.
Smell teleportation is the brainchild of Osmo, billing itself as a 'digital olfaction'. Osmo uses AI to analyze a scent somewhere and then reproduce it in an entirely different location without the need for humans.
In a post titled "We Did It!", Osmo explains how it used AI to 'digitize and rematerialize' the essence of a plum.
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The GCMS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) machine sucks the scent out of a vial and analyzes it to recreate those molecules elsewhere. The ramifications could be immense, as Osmo reminds us it's effectively given computers the sense of smell - pushing them one step closer to becoming humans.
Osmo uses the Principle Odor Map as an AI tool that predicts what a specific combination of molecules smells like. It's then sent to a Formulation Robot that treats it like a recipe and replicates the sample.
In a new short, Osmo CEO Alex Wiltschko shows how it all works and is clearly happy with the results.
Posting on X in the aftermath, Wiltschko said: "I don’t know if this is embarrassing, but I carry the plum scent with me a lot of places and smell it constantly. It makes me smile."
Osmo says it has the largest AI-compatible scent data bank in the world, and with it, it hopes to keep training AI to understand specific scents. If that wasn't enough, Osmo is also using AI to create brand-new scents and offer them to the perfume industry.
Over on Reddit, someone asked whether smell transportation could negatively impact the fragrance industry.
One person said: "That is not teleportation. it is recreation. It's like deciphering the recipe to coca cola and then making coca cola. So, to answer your question, no. Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry machines are already widely used in the industry."
Another added: "That's not gonna happen any time soon. It would be exteremely expensive, dangerous an impractical to send smells over the internet. Maybe it can work with some very simple olafactory profile but you are not downloading any Amouage in your lifetime.
In terms of other uses, there's the idea that scents could be used in video games. We're not sure we'd want to smell what's going on in Resident Evil or Alien: Isolation, but imagine whipping up a meal in Cooking Mama and being able to smell it.