ARM's James Myers said the big idea is that the chips will be small and cheap enough to be built into clothing, allowing an AI to keep tabs on your BO throughout the day.

ARM wants to add the chips to food packaging to monitor freshness. The e-noses are part of a project called PlasticArmPit, in which Arm is developing smart chips made from thin sheets of plastic. Each chip will have eight different sensors and a built-in machine learning circuit.

Myres said it will look like a piece of clingfilm with bits stuck to it.

"PlasticArmPit will be the first application of machine learning in plastic electronics."

Smells are made up of different combinations and concentrations of gases. The sensors on the chip will detect different chemicals in the air and the AI will take that complex data and identify it as a particular whiff. The chip will then score the smell. If it is in the armpit of your shirt, it will tell you the strength of your body odour from 1 to 5, said Myers.

"It's the job of the machine learning to collect and interpret all the data and then alert the user if action is needed."