Navigating the world of AI can be as complex as building a perfume accord. Each AI has its own character, strengths, and weaknesses—just like your favourite raw materials. I've spent countless hours testing these digital assistants to see how they can actually help with real perfumery work. This isn't about the marketing promises; it's about what these tools can genuinely do for your fragrance creations, formulations, and research. Here's my personal breakdown of the current AI landscape for perfumers and fragrance professionals.
Grok / xAI
Best For
Real-time information about fragrance trends and discussions. Perfect for discovering what perfume enthusiasts are saying about new releases on forums and social media.
Key Features
It belongs to X (formerly Twitter) and it talks like a hipster that (kinda) grew up. Its best feature is that it can read web pages and knows what is happening right up to the second—it has no stale data. It's the least censored, least filtered and focuses heavily on minimising hallucinations.
Use It For
Up-to-date info from social media and online in general. Example: "What does Jamie Frater say about Mousse de Saxe?" Grok gives a really good and long answer from lots of different sources (including podcasts). A brief quote: "Frater treats Mousse de Saxe as both a historical treasure and a practical gem, painstakingly revived to inspire today's fragrance creators."
Access & Cost
- Free Tier: Basic access available on x.ai or on X itself at x.com
- Premium: $20/month for X Premium subscription with full Grok 3 access
- Enterprise: Custom pricing available for businesses
Fun Fact
Grok comes from Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) by Robert A. Heinlein, a masterpiece of modern sci-fi literature. It's a Martian word meaning to understand a thing so essentially that you become part of that thing. For example: "I grok perfume".
Sample Prompts
- "What are perfume enthusiasts on X saying about the latest Bertrand Duchaufour Navitus release? Summarise the most common opinions."
- "Find the latest IFRA updates for coumarin from the past 3 months. Has anything changed in the regulations?"
ChatGPT
Best For
Organising your perfume formulations and analysing scent profiles. Excellent for tracking your inventory and referencing perfumery texts you've uploaded.
Key Features
This is the one that got the AI name out there. It is sophisticated and has search access via Bing. It does have stale data (up to April 2023). It's free to use the basics but you can pay for a subscription (in which case it can use search and data staleness is no longer a problem). The biggest downside is hallucinations. This thing LOVES to hallucinate. Always tell it "use verified sources and make nothing up."
ChatGPT is my favourite because you can upload data (for example a document with all your perfume musings and notes) and then refer to that data. You might upload your inventory to ChatGPT and then you can simply ask: "Do I have any Rose Imperiale left?" If you build your own GPT with MyGPT (really easy to do - just look for the option on ChatGPT) the files you upload remain private. But be warned, as with all of these AIs, anything you upload or questions you ask become part of its general training and others may ultimately have insights based on it. Always create your custom GPT once you set up your account.
Access & Cost
- Free Tier: Basic access with GPT-3.5 on chatgpt.com
- Plus: $20/month for GPT-4o, higher usage limits, and web browsing
- Team: $30/month per user for workspace collaboration features
- Enterprise: Custom pricing with advanced security and admin controls
Pro Tip
Upload a PDF of Arctander and you have easy access forevermore. Example: "How does Arctander differentiate between benzoin Siam and benzoin sumatra?". Here's the conclusion (after a page of detailed information): "While both are balsamic resins with fixative properties, Benzoin Siam is superior for fine fragrance due to its sweeter, more vanillic scent and lighter colour, whereas Benzoin Sumatra is coarser, darker, and more resinous, making it better suited for applications where a deep, balsamic character is needed."
Sample Prompts
- "I'm creating a fougère with lavender, oakmoss and coumarin. Suggest 3-5 complementary notes that would add a modern twist while maintaining the classic structure."
- "Create a detailed glossary entry explaining the difference between labdanum, cistus and rock rose oil in perfumery, including their olfactive profiles and common uses."
Claude AI
Best For
Perfume formulation calculations, IFRA compliance checks, and technical documentation for your creations. Exceptional for crafting professional fragrance descriptions.
Key Features
Claude is politically correct. It's designed to give the most sensitive and inoffensive answers to questions and so it is preferred for technical writing and formal research. Its results will offend no one so use it to help craft copy for your website (don't forget your personal touch though). Claude's data is stale to August 2024, but on the positive side it is trained to really shy away from hallucinations. You should always verify; however, with Claude you'll find yourself doing that far less often.
Where Claude really excels is in coding, general intelligence and mathematics. I use Claude to help me make changes to my websites. If I want a bit of Shopify code or HTML code, I ask Claude. It can handle extremely complex requests. People with just a prompt have had Claude create whole working games from scratch.
Access & Cost
- Free Tier: Limited usage with registration at Claude.ai
- Pro Tier: $20/month for higher message limits, priority access, and file uploads
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for businesses with advanced features and admin controls
Example Use Case
As far as general perfumery, Claude is very good at giving highly intelligent data. This is where you go if you want to know "I have 1 kg of alcohol, how many 100 mL bottles will that fill?" The answer Claude gives me is: "Since you can't fill a partial bottle completely, you would completely fill 12 bottles of 100 mL each, with about 67.4 mL left over (enough to fill approximately 2/3 of another bottle)."
Sample Prompts
- "I have 500ml of perfume oil at 25% concentration. If I want to dilute it to 15% concentration, how much alcohol should I add? Show your calculations."
- "Draft product copy for my new amber fragrance that features labdanum, vanilla and benzoin. Keep it sophisticated but approachable for a mainstream audience."
Perplexity
Best For
Researching perfume regulations, tracking ingredient restrictions, and staying updated on emerging fragrance trends with reliable sources.
Key Features
This one is a little different: it's a web search with AI power. This is the research beast. It gives sources, summarises the web and is great for academic data. Try this query: "what is the latest in the potential ban of heliotropin?" We already get a mention! "Some companies, like Fraterworks, have already developed replacement products such as "Heliotropin Repl X24" in anticipation of potential regulatory changes."
Dump Google—it's practically useless these days anyway. Perplexity should be your go-to web search engine; it integrates easily into all web browsers.
Access & Cost
- Free Tier: Limited daily queries with basic features
- Pro: $20/month for unlimited searches, higher-quality models, and custom collections
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for team collaboration and advanced features
Sample Prompts
- "What are the current EU restrictions on hydroxycitronellal in perfumes? Compare with IFRA guidelines and summarise the key differences."
- "Research the latest natural extraction methods being used for rose absolute in 2025. Which method is producing the most cost-effective results?"
Copilot
Best For
Perfumers working in corporate environments who need to generate presentations, documentation, and reports about their fragrances while staying within the Microsoft ecosystem.
Key Features
I'm mentioning this one as a bonus really. It uses ChatGPT and Bing so the results are going to be similar to what you get there (minus the customisability of personal GPTs). This one, however, really shines if you are embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem. It is built into most of their software (including Office365) and their Edge browser. At Fraterworks we use Microsoft's Teams software and some of the team like Copilot but for those of us working more directly at the perfume-specific coalface, we tend to use the others on this list for their specialisations.
Access & Cost
- Free Tier: Basic Copilot features in Edge browser and Windows 11
- Copilot Pro: $20/month for advanced features across Microsoft apps
- Copilot for Microsoft 365: $30/user/month (requires Microsoft 365 subscription)
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger organisations
Sample Prompts
- "Help me draft a brief Teams message to our product development team explaining the concept for our new botanical fragrance collection, highlighting the rare botanicals we want to incorporate."
- "Draft an email to suppliers requesting samples of synthetic sandalwood alternatives. Include specific questions about longevity, olfactive profile, and pricing."
In summary:
Freshness:
- Real-time data: Grok, Perplexity, and Copilot
- Moderate lag: Claude (August 2024)
- Significant lag: ChatGPT free tier (April 2023)
Use Case for Perfumers:
- Grok: Social media trends and real-time fragrance discussions
- ChatGPT: Perfume formula organisation and reference material analysis
- Claude: IFRA compliance calculations and professional fragrance descriptions
- Perplexity: Ingredient regulations and research with citations
- Copilot: Corporate documentation for fragrance developers
Monthly Costs:
- Free options: All have basic free tiers with limitations
- Paid tiers: $20-30/month for individual premium access
- Enterprise: All offer custom pricing for businesses
Tone of Voice:
- Grok's blunt, ChatGPT's neutral, Claude's careful, Perplexity's factual, Copilot's professional.
AI Glossary for Perfumers
Hallucinations: When AI confidently presents false information as fact. Similar to mistaking a synthetic molecule for a natural ingredient—it seems convincing but isn't accurate.
Prompt: The instruction or question you give to an AI. Think of it like a perfume brief—the clearer and more detailed, the better the result.
Custom GPT/MyGPT: A personalised version of ChatGPT that you can create with specific knowledge and uploaded documents. Like having a reference library tailored to your specific fragrance interests.
Stale data: Information the AI has that only goes up to a certain date (like Claude's "October 2024" knowledge cutoff). After this date, the AI doesn't know about new developments or regulations.
Context window: How much information the AI can consider at once. The larger the context window, the more complex questions it can handle—like the difference between analyzing a simple cologne versus a complex oriental fragrance.
Training: The process by which AI learns from data. This is why, as mentioned in the article, "anything you upload or questions you ask become part of its general training."
API: Application Programming Interface—how different software systems talk to each other. Not mentioned directly, but it's what powers many AI integrations.
Large Language Model (LLM): The underlying technology behind all these AI assistants. They're trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human language.
