Think beauty is moving at record speed? Just wait until AI gets involved.
Proprietary algorithms will enable ramped-up product development timelines, greater qualities of content, in addition to taking guesswork out of consumer shopping habits, industry executives agree.
“Generative AI is probably going to be one of the biggest transformational areas for any business, even more than the metaverse or things like that, because the applications of the technology are endless,” said Jane Lauder, executive vice president, enterprise marketing and chief data officer of the Estée Lauder Cos. “We’re focused on leveraging technology to drive and support our strengths of high-quality, high-efficacy, high-performance products and high-touch consumer experiences.”
Lauder is using the technologies more internally than externally — and for now. “We’re not generating something new that we’re putting out in front of the consumer first,” Lauder said. “We’re using it to generate insights for ourselves.”
In the future, though, AI technology will be used from packaging design to product marketing, and will be powered by Lauder’s vast trove of consumer data.
“When we bring it in, how we make it smart and educated is using our own data,” Lauder said. “We have information on millions and millions of customers in our database. This is all privacy and consent-approved, but it’s about giving those consumers even more relevant information, even better product, even better information, for it to feel more personal.”
Her philosophy, though, is one that combines human intelligence with the latest in AI. “You need human intelligence to work with artificial intelligence to get the creative magic,” Lauder said, adding that humans would vet generated content to ensure distinct voices for each brand. “It can only iterate based on the information you give it. It can’t dream up things that had never been thought of before.”
From a workforce point of view, new technologies will allow employees to work smarter and produce greater volumes.
“It’s not about getting rid of jobs,” said Ekta Chopra, E.l.f. Beauty’s chief digital officer. “It’s about how you make those jobs more effective and have more volume.”
“Wherever you tend to have a process focus, in terms of the way the function works, there is a general consensus that AI can pick up some of the slack on the process itself,” said Marc Wallace, a senior client partner at recruitment firm Korn Ferry.
“It’s going to free up time for people across all levels of work to do things more value-added,” said Marie Driscoll, managing director, luxury and retail at Coresight Research.
Still, trust in ChatGPT has some way to go. Korn Ferry last month released a survey which polled 312 professionals that revealed 46 percent of respondents are using the AI chatbot as part of their workday, and 83 percent plan on using it in the future.
Yet, less than half — 43 percent — said they trust that ChatGPT will give accurate results.
Eighty percent of the respondents said they believe ChatGPT to be a legitimate, beneficial tool for work that will remain. While 24 percent shared that their employers are already urging the use of it in the workplace.
At E.l.f., the implications of AI span marketing, product development and content.
“As you go through product formulations, generative AI can analyze the chemical compounds and ingredients and suggest new and innovative combinations. It can help R&D be faster, and your cycles can be much faster by generating ideas,” Chopra said.
It could even help shorten timelines on product stability testing. “Is there a way for AI to capture the requirement for testing — you can do that along the way with AI, and it can replace that amount of time it would take to build a product,” she said. “That hasn’t been tapped into yet.”
Chopra agreed that human checkpoints on AI-generated content and products would be a necessity. “There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know, especially around image and copywriting. There’s stuff that could come up from a legal perspective,” she said. “At the end of the day, the code is written by humans, and human biases exist. So you have to keep that ethical lens.”
AI could also be a powerful tool to personalize content and campaigns. “It can analyze consumer data and provide which content for which audience, and how things show up,” Chopra said. “With generative AI, it’s the form of text-to-image, text-to-music, et cetera can really bring campaigns to life and personalize them to each consumer.”
Personalization is at the fore of how L’Oréal is thinking about AI, especially as it relates to marketing and selling products. “We’re moving away from this idea of having beauty for everyone, to having beauty for each person,” said Guive Balooch, L’Oréal’s global head of research and innovation’s technology incubator.
Though the technology will benefit every category, Balooch said it would specifically help consumers select skin care and fragrances. “There is a big auditioning process behind choosing skin care, and if you could know what the right product was for — your biology, your microbiome, your proteins and your genomics — it’s what I call precision beauty,” he said.
“We used to create products for people, and now we’ll be able to cocreate with them on an individual basis. That kind of interaction between the consumer and the corporation will be more enabled, thanks to technology,” Balooch continued.
Like E.l.f., L’Oréal is “embedding AI in everything we’re doing today when it comes to our labs,” he said. “There are so many molecules and formulas and compounds that you have to search for to find the ones that are the most performing, and AI is going to help us do that more effectively.”
Unilever used AI to identify a vegan carmine alternative, which Hourglass introduced two years ago. “That would have taken years for scientists to do without digital tools,” said Dr. Samantha Tucker-Samaras, Unilever’s global vice president of science and technology, beauty and well-being, in an email.
Lynx for Men also introduced a limited-edition AI body spray, which was developed with 46 terabytes of data, 6,000 ingredients, and 3.5 million potential combinations before landing on the specific scent.
“We can test millions of recipe combinations in seconds to help us create even better formulations for our consumers, and identify alternate ingredients, which can not only strengthen the resilience of our supply chain, but also help to make our formulations more sustainable and cost-efficient without impacting a product’s quality or effectiveness,” Tucker-Samaras said.