An AI company called Osmo is trying to bring back the idea of “Smell-O-Vision,” which was first proposed by Hans Laube in 1960. This time, the goal is more significant: to make people’s lives better by teaching computers to understand smells.
The advanced technology behind Osmo is a mix of science and engineering that aims to create generative AI that can handle smells, similar to how OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini handle sounds and pictures.
“In this new era, computers will generate smells like we generate images and sounds today.”
Osmo Faces Scent Challenges
It is much harder to make computers able to recognize and identify smells than it is to make them able to see or hear. Microphones and cameras have been around for a long time to record sound and images, but there isn’t a straight device for recording smells.
Breathalyzers and other technologies that are already out there can only test certain gases and molecules. A very hard job is to make a system that can accurately interpret a lot of different smells.
Osmo’s method involves finding molecular patterns that are linked to different smells and teaching AI to spot these patterns. But because there wasn’t already a “smell map” for AI to learn from, Osmo had to start from scratch and connect chemical bonds with specific smells, which was a very precise process.
In an interview with CNBC, Alex Wiltschko, CEO and co-founder of Osmo and a former Google engineer, talked about how hard this job is. Even though there are problems, the company’s goal is not just to make Smell-O-Vision again.
“The reason why it’s so challenging is because you can move one tiny thing around in that molecule, like one bond, and the scent of the molecule goes from roses to rotten egg.”
They want to make a system that can smell things better than humans can. For example, it would be able to smell diseases like cancer or people with low blood sugar.Osmo is also looking into how molecular synthesis could be used to make smells again.
This could make it possible for a computer to “smell” something in one place and send that smell to another, sending smells across the internet.This new technology could also change marketing and branding, as companies could one day use smells as part of their brand identity, along with sounds and images.
