South Korean Beauty Fans Turn to AI for Perfect Foundation Shades and Lipstick Colors
South Korean beauty fans are turning to AI for personalised foundation hues. AmorePacific's AI beauty lab provides personalised face products and lipstick colour recommendations. Global firms such as L'Oréal and Sephora also use AI to adapt items to their clients' preferences.
Customers have taken to the company's new AI beauty lab, which uses robots to custom blend face products and cutting-edge technology to select the best lipstick colours. Traditionally, consumers would settle with the most popular colour offered at the counter, but now they may have a more individualised experience.
Kwon You-jin, a 32-year-old consumer of AmorePacific's tailored skin cosmetics service, was pleased with the AI-generated report on her skin health. She said, "Knowing more data about my own skin, and seeing the before-and-after firsthand, is a very good experience." After receiving the report, a robot mixed a foundation that perfectly matched her skin tone.
AmorePacific is not the only cosmetics company embracing AI to enhance sales. Global brands like L'Oréal S.A. and Sephora, owned by LVMH, are also utilising AI to tailor products to customers' specific needs. The global beauty industry, including cosmetics, reached a staggering US$625.6 billion in sales in 2023, steadily climbing annually since the dip caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to Statista Market Insights.
AmorePacific utilises AI to recommend the best choices for customers from a wide range of options. They offer 205 different skin foundations and 366 different lip product colors. Engineer Lee Young-jin, an advisor for AmorePacific's custom beauty business, explained, "We used deep learning, machine learning techniques to take the process that experts use to evaluate data from many peoples' skins into an (automated) service,"
Analysts believe that using AI instead of human consultants can expedite product development and reduce variables. Yang Yong Suk, a principal researcher at South Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), who co-developed a deep learning model for cosmetic product texture, stated, "No matter how professional an expert is, individual deviations can be large, and evaluating cosmetics by consulting 30 to 40 experts all the time is difficult." He noted that merging AI technology might further reduce industry barriers.
The market for AI in the beauty and cosmetics industries is expected to more than double, from $3.27 billion in 2023 to $8.1 billion by 2028. According to Business Research Company, this development will be driven by services such as personalised beauty advice, skin analysis and diagnostics, and virtual makeup artists.
South Korean beauty enthusiasts turn to AI for personalised foundation shades
AmorePacific's AI beauty lab offers custom-mixed face products and lipstick color recommendations
Global brands like L'Oréal and Sephora also utilise AI to tailor products to customers' needs
Source: REUTERS