Givaudan Prepares Product Development Utilizing AI

Givaudan Taste & Wellbeing will launch Advanced Tools for Modeling (ATOM) which uses artificial intelligence to optimize food and flavor formulation and facilitate co-creation and collaboration with customers, according to a press release issued by the company.

ATOM is the most recent addition to an ecosystem of digital and AI tools that allow teams all over the world to streamline the end-to-end creation process from conception to rollout. Building on over two decades of research, ATOM uses AI and data science techniques to minimize trial and error in the process. The tools identify positive and negative flavor drivers and explore ingredient synergies, to generate new options and insights aligned with consumer preferences. The results are then displayed in graphically rich and interactive dashboards.

Givaudan’s Head of Global Science & Technology, Fabio Campanile, said: “ATOM strikes the right balance between AI and human intuition, complementing the work of our expert flavorists and developers. Tools such as ATOM enable us to help our customers to go beyond consumer expectations, using insight, collaboration, and innovation. Implementing what we call ‘wide-eyed thinking’ allows us to use these insights to leverage our curiosity and deep ingredient knowledge to accelerate new product development and create the food experiences of the future”, added Campanile.

Early projects using the tools have been highly successful. ATOM was recently used to reduce salt in cheese snacks. The team was able to quickly identify the best recipe, delivering a 33% reduction in salt, from a much smaller range of options predicted by ATOM. In blind taste testing the reduced salt recipe scored as highly as the original full-salt snack. The process has also proved viable for sugar reduction, vanillin replacement, and meat alternative projects.