AI predicts chemicals’ smells from their structures

An artificial-intelligence system can describe how compounds smell simply by analysing their chemical structures. The neural network can provide descriptions, such as ‘grassy’, for hundreds of molecules, including some that don’t exist in nature. Smell is the only sensory input that goes directly from the sensory organ to the brain’s memory and emotional centres without passing through other brain regions — which is why scents can evoke specific, intense memories.