Key Takeaways:
Amid all the buzz around generative artificial intelligence, Guive Balooch, Global Vice President of Augmented Beauty and Open Innovation at L’Oréal Groupe, said the French beauty giant has been placing big bets on the technology to apply it to consumer-facing tools like Beauty Genius and to improve formulation development.
But, he stressed, AI isn’t always the answer. “I’ve been at L’Oréal for 20 years, and in every meeting, we don’t ask ourselves, ‘How will Gen AI be used for beauty?’” Balooch told BeautyMatter. “We’re more focused on how to solve the big tensions in beauty.”
Instead, Balooch said that data is the central core of all of L’Oréal’s technology innovations. L’Oréal’s database contains 14,500 terabytes; for reference, one terabyte equals 250,000 photos or 500 hours of HD video.
Balooch shared the example of Lancôme’s Foundation Shade Finder, an AI-powered tool that analyzes skin tone and matches it with foundation. L’Oréal’s research and development team studied consumers with a wide array of skin tones to analyze how foundation would dry on the skin, and also developed selfie video technology to correct for lighting variations so that the tool can assess skin tone accurately.
The January 2022 launch of L’Oréal’s at-home hair color device Colorsonic, meanwhile, was delayed by six months because Balooch said the company discovered that the technology wasn’t as effective for curly-haired users. L’Oréal developed an entirely different data subset to ensure the technology was more equitable.
“We are building the data subsets before we build the algorithm recommendations,” said Balooch. He added that the process can take longer, “but the consumer satisfaction is much higher when we do that.”
Balooch also offered two predictions for the areas where generative AI will have the greatest impact on beauty. The first involves how it could speed up formulation development. “The ability for us to find these molecules much faster, I think, is really exciting,” said Balooch. He added that AI accelerates molecule discovery by allowing researchers to screen thousands of biological or chemical candidates virtually before moving into physical testing. Scientists are also leveraging predictive AI models to identify which molecular structures are most likely to deliver stability, efficacy, and compatibility in a formulation. A partnership that L’Oréal announced last year with IBM, leveraging the tech giant’s AI technology to develop a formulation foundation model, is expected to unlock new insights.
The second involves even more personalized AI-enabled recommendations. Balooch said there’s a lot of joy in experimenting with fragrance or colors, but “there’s frustration around hair color, which lasts for six months, or skincare, which you want to make sure is the right one,” said Balooch. “Gen AI will help us, thanks to the right data.”
Back in 2024, when L'Oréal debuted the generative AI-powered beauty assistant Beauty Genius, Balooch said the “tension” the company wanted to address was that consumers may not always be able to afford a visit to a dermatology office or to pay for a makeup artist.
“We realized that this can be solved, thanks to these new models,” said Balooch, referring to the advancements of large language models that tap into L’Oréal’s proprietary data and clinical studies to make personalized recommendations on a mobile-friendly webpage and, later this year, on WhatsApp. The Beauty Genius launch was a central theme of the CES 2024 keynote speech given by L’Oréal CEO Nicolas Hieronimus.
This year at CES, however, energy efficiency, more targeted beauty outcomes, and advancements in infrared and LED technologies that have lowered the cost of manufacturing were the key themes that Balooch’s team tapped into, not a consumer-facing application of generative AI. The Light Straight + Multi-styler is an infrared styling tool that promises to reduce heat damage on hair, while the LED Face Mask prototype is an ultra-thin, flexible silicone mask that emits light onto the face to combat fine lines and sagging.
“Light has been around forever, obviously, but the power of light to actually do something to the skin and hair has only been technologically possible over the last three to five years,” said Balooch.
Other CES launches spearheaded by Balooch have included the AirLight Pro hair dryer and the HAPTA device, which makes it easier for consumers with limited arm mobility to apply makeup at home. The steady cadence of tech innovations over the years comes as L’Oréal benefits from a position of strength within the industry. In February, the company reported total sales of €44.05 billion ($52.05 billion) for 2025, up 1.3% from the previous year. L’Oréal reported that its sales outperformed the overall beauty market, with growth across all divisions and regions.
One area where Balooch is more bearish is the use of technology to develop personalized formulations. This was an arena L’Oréal explored in 2020 when it launched an AI-enabled device called Perso, which created custom skincare, lipstick, and foundation.
“There is a niche market for that, but I don’t think it’s all about bespoke formulas,” said Balooch. “I think there’s a lot of technology out there in terms of formulas. What [consumers] need is tech, like AI, to help guide them and not just give them more options.”
Beyond the work with IBM and L’Oréal’s in-house team of 8,000 digital, tech, and data experts, partnerships with Google, AI chipmaker Nvidia, and AI startups like Noli also play a key role. Balooch oversees two teams today: internal employees and “open innovation,” which involves the company’s external partnerships.
“There are all these new frontiers—AI, generative AI, and biotech,” said Balooch. “Of course, we are hiring new talent, but we will not be able to hire the kind of experts as Nvidia. And I think that the solutions that Nvidia and IBM are creating are not competing, because there is so much to do.”