L’Oréal is a regular at CES in Las Vegas, the great American technology show. Now obvious for a global cosmetics giant positioning itself as the world number one in “beauty tech”.
To develop its catalog of digital solutions, L’Oréal can rely on its extensive data assets.
A data asset of 10 petabytes
“We have the world’s richest database on every aspect of beauty, from skin and hair knowledge to formulation science, beauty routines and consumer communication ”, boasts its general director, Nicolas Hieronimus.
“We already have 10 petabytes of data on our L’Oréal data platform, which supports all types of AI models, including the latest LLMs,” he continues. The cosmetics group could not ignore generative AI.
To design its GenAI tool, L’Oréal started from the observation that many consumers struggle to find the right products. “70% of them feel overwhelmed by the number of choices available,” underlines the manager.
The company’s response to this problem therefore takes the form of a virtual personal beauty advisor. “It is not a chatbot, but rather a fully personalized solution based on an in-depth individual diagnosis,” assures Nicolas Hieronimus.
Voice assistant on smartphone
L’Oreal Paris BeautyGenius thus becomes the group’s first digital advisor. The application presented at CES 2024 runs on a smartphone. During the demo, the CEO interacts with the service by voice and in natural language.
His request: he has just arrived in Las Vegas and is suffering from jet lag. What advice can the assistant give him? This one, still vocally, immediately recommends an eye serum – available in the L’Oréal range, naturally.
The advisor also recommends a skin analysis using a photo taken from the smartphone. A skin diagnosis can be carried out on several dimensions. This is followed by recommendations, particularly purchasing ones, but also video tutorials.
What about the underlying technological base? Details are provided by Barbara Lavernos, deputy general director of L’Oréal, in charge of research, innovation and technology. BeautyGenius is an assembly of components.
BeautyGenius combination of AI and LLM
The Advisor is the “combination of the most advanced technologies: augmented reality, computer vision and color science. We have integrated more than 10 different LLMs and a very sophisticated architecture,” she explains.
Barbara Lavernos further specifies that the AI was trained “on an inclusive dataset of more than 6,000 images and tested by makeup artists on more than 10,000 products in 50 countries”.
Concerning skin diagnosis alone, an application that pre-existed, the algorithms “were trained on more than 150,000 images from dermatologists and labeled images from a fully inclusive dataset powered by a significant number of images from dermatologists and labeled images.”