Thanks to the rapid adoption of AI technology, consumer expectations have changed more in the last five years than in the last 30. In the modern world, the way beauty products are discovered, tested, and purchased is ever changing, with AI enriching experiences through enhanced services, customizations, and personalizations. According to McKinsey, the global beauty industry is expected to see AI-driven tools influence up to 70% of consumer interactions with brands by 2027.
French beauty giant L’Oréal Groupe believes in the benefits AI can bring to beauty businesses, as evidenced by multiple integrations of the technology across its portfolio of brands in recent years. From acquiring Canadian AI beauty company ModiFace in 2018, to creating the HAPTA smart makeup applicator in 2023, as well as the introduction of Cell Bioprint at CES 2025—a device that claims to identify skin concerns before they become visible—it is clear that L’Oréal is focused on scaling its business alongside AI’s growth.
Placing further bets on AI’s ability to progress beauty business ventures, L’Oréal has collaborated with global technology innovator IBM—leveraging its GenAI technology and expertise to uncover new insights in cosmetic formulation data, facilitating L’Oréal’s use of sustainable raw materials for energy and material waste reductions. The partnership will see the duo develop a custom AI foundation model—a type of AI model trained on a broad set of unlabeled data, capable of performing various tasks and applying information from one situation to another. The model is believed to be a first-of-its-kind in the beauty industry, redefining AI innovation by combining beauty, chemistry, and technology.
“As part of our Digital Transformation Program, this partnership will extend the speed and scale of our innovation and reformulation pipeline, with products always reaching higher standards of inclusivity, sustainability, and personalization," said Stéphane Ortiz, Head of Innovation Métiers & Product Development at L'Oréal Research & Innovation.
The creation of the new AI model will utilize a range of formulation and component data points to accelerate tasks performed by L’Oréal, including the creation of new productions, the reformulation of existing SKUs and optimization for scale-up production—tools that will better equip L'Oréal's 4,000 researchers worldwide over the next several years. Additionally, IBM consulting will guide L’Oréal through its ambitions to rethink and redesign the formulation discovery process to help preserve earth's natural resources. The partnership will contribute towards L’Oréal’s for the Future program’s target of gathering the majority of its product formulas from bio-sourced materials and/or the circular economy by 2030.
“This collaboration is a truly impactful application of generative AI, leveraging the power of technology and expertise for the good of the planet,” says Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, Vice President Europe and Africa and Director at IBM Research Zurich. "At IBM, we believe in the power of purpose-built, customized AI to help transform businesses. Using IBM's latest AI technology, L'Oréal will be able to derive meaningful insights from their rich formula and product data to create a tailored AI model to help achieve their operational goals and continue creating high-quality and sustainable products."
L’Oréal is not the only beauty conglomerate making the effort to protect the planet while experimenting with product formulations and maintaining growth in the beauty industry. At the beginning of the year, Estée Lauder Companies opened an in-house BioTechnology Hub, which was designed to identify and create proprietary, bio-based alternatives to traditional ingredients, with an aim to further advance its sustainability efforts across its product development and manufacturing process.
In the race to sustainably transform the beauty industry, it is worth keeping track of the beauty names paving the way for a future where science and technology can help inform solutions that are both ecologically responsible and innovative. As technology continues to evolve, the convergence of beauty science, AI, and sustainability will drive new standards of efficiency, inclusivity, and ecological responsibility, redefining the future of beauty on a global scale.
“Building on years of unique beauty science expertise and of data structuring, L’Oréal’s major alliance with IBM is opening a new exciting era for our innovation and development process,” concludes Matthieu Cassier, Chief Transformation & Digital Officer at L'Oréal Research & Innovation.
