As an online perfume creator, receiving new followers is a regular occurrence for Elise Grenier. But in July, Grenier received a rather unusual new follower on Instagram: Iris Lane, a would-be perfume influencer. Unlike other influencers, Iris Lane was not a person, but a figure created by the fragrance incubator Slate Brands using artificial intelligence. Like many other perfume creators, Grenier, who has over 65,000 followers on her @eliselovessmells TikTok account, posted a video to TikTok sharing her unease about the AI influencer.
“My main concern was the can of worms that this opens,” Grenier told Glossy. “Using AI to manufacture art is one thing. Using AI to create someone to interpret and react to art is very weird. It’s like we’ve taken both sides of that experience and replaced it with AI. And I just don’t like that.”
Slate removed Iris Lane’s account in a matter of days following swift backlash. But while Iris Lane came and went as fast as a perfume top note, AI in perfumery is very much here to stay. Prada proudly touted the AI-generated jasmine accord in its 2024 launch Paradoxe Virtual Flower. Startups like Osmo have banked on AI-generated perfume as their key differentiator, while established fragrance giants like Symrise and Givaudan are investing in their own AI capabilities.
Few could argue against the way the emergence of the internet and social media has revolutionized the fragrance industry in recent years, leading to an explosion in new launches and fostering a world of creators who make their living speaking and writing about perfume. But the next digital frontier — artificial intelligence — has sparked far more ambivalent feelings.
Its proponents argue that AI can democratize a historically secretive and exclusive industry. Others fear that — in addition to the concerns around sustainability and job loss that plague conversations around AI in countless other industries — AI may erode the human touch and creativity that makes perfume exciting, to begin with.
“At Slate Brands, we introduced Iris Lane to harness AI’s potential, delivering dynamic storytelling, education and engagement to ignite curiosity and fresh ideas in fragrance. Our vision was an experimental space for format and imagination, always enhancing — not replacing — human artistry,” Slate told Glossy in an emailed statement. “We paused Iris Lane after feedback revealed a misperception: some saw it as replacing partners rather than offering a new format to enrich the space.”
With polarized opinions in mind, Olya Bar, head of digital strategy and communications at niche fragrance retailer Twisted Lily, said her team is approaching AI with “cautious optimism.”
“There’s so much potential when it comes to AI for creation and regulatory management,” said Bar. “But of course, it cannot replicate the emotional or cultural nuance of human creativity, which is what social media and, particularly, the PerfumeTok community has been about.”
Bar said Twisted Lily’s consumers have been largely supportive of its AI-powered virtual shopping assistant, named Lily. But though she believes fragrance companies should be conscious of divided consumer sentiment on AI, there’s no denying the changes that are already taking place.
“I would almost compare this to when the internet was created. And some people, believe it or not, were saying, ‘Why do we need this? Why do we need email?’” said Bar. “AI is changing things in a way that is truly remarkable. And whoever is not seeing it has already been left behind.”
For Christina Loff, author of the perfume Substack The Dry Down Diaries, the Iris Lane debacle was an example of what happens when companies adopt AI before taking stock of how fragrance consumers feel about the subject.
“[AI] is not welcomed by the community right now,” said Loff. While she acknowledges that there are useful applications for AI, she said she would be wary of purchasing a perfume made entirely by AI without a human nose.
“I live in the Bay Area. I use AI,” she said. “But why so many of us fell in love with the fragrance world is because of the people behind it, the stories and the history. And you lose all that when you have AI doing too much of it.”
What AI may lose in human stories, it can make up for in speed and cost. The Target-exclusive affordable fragrance line Fine’ry is open about using AI in its marketing campaigns to be both quick to market and cut costs. But even for fragrance obsessives, rapid-fire releases aren’t necessarily a good thing.
“The only reason we need to expedite the process of being able to make these formulas is because the pressure is there to come out with new releases faster and faster,” said Grenier. “I understand that businesses need to be competitive and they need to have new releases to stay relevant, but it just takes away from the artistry and the fun, and fuels this overconsumption that is really just not good for the perfume world as a whole.”
Arizona-based perfumer Ethan Turner acknowledges those negative connotations and applications of AI, such as duping existing formulas. But he is banking on consumers who are open to AI as an avenue for innovation: Turner is the co-founder and CMO of Scircle, a fragrance startup that will use AI to generate custom perfumes based on stories and prompts inputted by customers. The company is slated to launch its platform to the public in September.
“There are a lot of people who are afraid to compete, or are afraid to look at the industry and say, ‘How do I use AI as a tool? How do I help it to correct formulas, or make formulas more mass appealing, or less mass appealing?’” he said. “There are malicious ways that AI can be used, but any technology can be used in a malicious way. And that’s not just for our industry. That’s for all industries.”
For all the hype around AI as a great disruptor, for good or for bad, wariness of new technology is nothing new.
“With every new technology in history, there’s great discomfort,” said Saskia Wilson-Brown, founder and executive director of the Institute for Art and Olfaction, a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to offering resources and education to independent perfumers. And the fragrance industry, in particular, has been wary of new technology, such as the advent of gas chromatography machines in the 1970s, which allowed manufacturers to capture the molecules in a given fragrance to backward-engineer its formula.
“Culturally, perfume is sort of predicated on this idea of paucity, like a paucity of a lack of access,” she said. “So that culture that serves the marketing departments very well is often threatened by these new technologies that ‘democratize’ fields, in this case, perfumery. I don’t know if AI has quite been democratized in the field yet, but it’s certainly, much like [online perfume database] Basenotes, adding more tools for the curious mind.”
Wilson-Brown said she has aimed to keep an open mind to AI, while acknowledging its ethical issues. In May, the Institute welcomed the AI-powered fragrance house Generation by Osmo as a presenting partner for its annual Art and Olfaction Awards. But she also finds that the aspects that make fragrance fans so protective of perfume as a craft may also be what ultimately shields it from such technological disruption.
“At the end of the day, the experience of perfume is an inherently personal one, and it’s inherently physical. It’s inherently embodied,” said Wilson-Brown. “Nothing can hack that. That is the core experience of fragrance, which is why I’m kind of nonplussed by the AI thing. I still smell perfumes, and who cares how it’s made? As long as I enjoy it or don’t, as the case may be, there’s something fundamentally human about that, that resists technology.”
