For years, beauty personalization has relied on asking consumers a series of questions: What notes do you like? Floral or woody? Fresh or gourmand? Now, AI can potentially make those questions obsolete.
The Estée Lauder Companies launched Scent Scanner, a new AI-powered fragrance discovery experience for Jo Malone London, that analyzes consumers' Pinterest boards to recommend fragrances based on the images they save rather than the answers they provide. Rolling out in the US and France, the digital experience marks the latest evolution in AI-powered beauty commerce, shifting personalization from consumer input toward behavioral signals.
Available exclusively on Pinterest, the tool allows users to submit one of their boards, and then AI interprets visual cues such as color palettes, textures, destinations, rituals, aesthetics, and imagery, using that input to generate a curated selection of Jo Malone London fragrances.
The launch builds on Jo Malone London's AI Scent Advisor, introduced in 2025, which generates fragrance recommendations through conversational prompts. Scent Scanner moves the experience one step further by replacing language with visual preference as the starting point for discovery.
Rather than asking consumers what they want, The Estée Lauder Companies believes AI can increasingly infer preference from existing digital behavior.
"For years, personalization in beauty meant asking people what they wanted. The bigger opportunity is to understand what they already love—and to meet them where their taste already lives," said Aude Gandon, Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, The Estée Lauder Companies, in the press release.
The approach reflects a broader shift across beauty toward predictive commerce, where recommendation engines increasingly rely on browsing habits, saved content, and behavioral data rather than traditional quizzes. Pinterest, where users curate aspirational mood boards spanning fashion, interiors, travel, and beauty, offers an unusually rich source of visual intent.
Julie Towns, Vice President of Product Marketing and Operations at Pinterest, told BeautyMatter she believes Scent Scanner will be “ a strong opportunity for beauty experiences to become more predictive, using what people already save and curate to make shopping feel more intuitive, relevant, and inspiring."
The partnership also reflects Pinterest's growing role as a commerce platform rather than simply a source of inspiration. As beauty brands look to shorten the journey from discovery to purchase, platforms that already capture consumer intent are becoming increasingly valuable partners.
"People come to Pinterest to picture the life they want, and they tell us who they are in images long before they have the words for it," Towns added. "Scent Scanner reads that visual language and turns it into fragrance discovery that feels less like searching and more like being known."
For fragrance brands, the opportunity is particularly significant. Unlike makeup or skincare, scent has historically been one of beauty's most difficult categories to digitize because consumers cannot experience fragrance through a screen. AI-powered recommendation tools are increasingly attempting to bridge that gap by translating personal preferences into scent profiles before consumers ever visit a store.
The Estée Lauder Companies and Pinterest further showcased their collaboration during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2026, where executives from both companies discussed the growing role of AI, personalization, and visual discovery in shaping the future of consumer commerce.
