Is it a market takeover? A gimmick? The next big thing? Beauty industry leaders aren’t waiting for AI to shake things up. They’re already utilizing cutting-edge tech to lead the way.
AI Has Joined the Chat
Imaging AI technology is already here, from the skin scans able to identify potential areas of concern to the learning algorithms suggesting solutions.
And now we can do so much more than just analyze a selfie. “FACE by Galderma is actually for our dermatologists to use,” explains Alicia Criner, global head of digital and media for Galderma. “So, when you have a consultation for a treatment, they can actually show you getting a little bit of filler or some sculpting on your cheeks. Or, even using neurotoxins to freeze wrinkles and frown lines. They can actually show you in advance what that would look like and really tailor it to you. We didn’t have this technology even five years ago.”
Who’s Afraid of AI?
It’s no secret that the rise of social media and the early integrations of generative AI answers have led to misinformation. When Google thinks 1912 was 20 years ago, you can’t deny that there’s a learning curve.
“Over the past five years, we’ve seen an increase in consumer education, but also an increase in consumer miseducation,” says Dr. Brent Ridge, founder of Beekman 1802. “As brands, we have to be aware of both of those buckets and what role we are playing in each.”
But, stopping misinformation doesn’t mean turning away from AI. It means training it on good data. “Companies like Galderma, Perfect Corp. and others are partnering directly with dermatologists to make sure that our models are accurate and based on clinical studies,” Criner says.
If AI can be utilized as an accurate learning tool, the opportunities are endless. This is particularly true for the world of skin care, which can be based on complex science that’s not exactly common knowledge. “We’re using the backbones of this technology [Perfect Corp.’s AI Skin Diagnostic tool] as an educational tool,” Dr. Ridge says. “A consumer can use this tool to look at their dry patches, redness, wrinkles or oily patches, and then we explain that this could be caused by an imbalance in their skin microbiome. We can at least start to help the consumer understand that there is a microbiome—there is an ecosystem.”
Gold-Star Student
Olay’s Skin Advisor, released in 2017, was the very first AI-powered program based on selfies to evaluate skin and recommend products. And since then, the program has only gotten better.
“We knew if we could teach an AI model to predict things using selfies, we could get much better outputs for recommendations,” explains Shannon Weitz, Olay’s senior scientist and the inventor of Skin Advisor. “We started with 50,000 images, but now, that number is in the millions.”
Using so much training data has a purpose, especially when it comes to the model’s specific role as a Skin Advisor. “We’re not just getting better at product recommendations, but we’re learning more about the zones of the face that contribute to aging and what that looks like across the board,” Weitz says. “Now, it’s not just smarter and more robust, but the data it provides is also helping to lead our research and development.”
One of the 1,250 participants in the “Olay Beats AI” campaign, shown alongside her AI-predicted photo.
Take Notes
Critically, now that these models are adequately trained, the data they are collecting is in turn instructing researchers. This includes everything from advancing our own understanding of the aging process to the new frontiers of microbiome research and cutting-edge ingredients.
And it’s happening quickly. “AI is also going to help us gain more information about the microbiome and how these different organisms are interacting with each other and the skin, and we are doing it much more rapidly than we anticipated,” Dr. Ridge says. “That’s going to lead to more personalized skin care than ever before.”
AI models focused on aging have even given us a concrete way to see how skin care is benefiting us in the long run, as was depicted in the “Olay Beats AI” campaign. Olay used proprietary AI technology created by Canfield Scientific to show how longtime Olay skin-care users proved AI aging predictions wrong. The AI took more than 40 years to create, was trained on 3-D images, and is able to show the impact of gravity on the face.
“The predicted results we got from the AI model were beautiful women,” Weitz says. “But then the real women walked out, and they looked incredible compared to the prediction. So you realize, oh my god, that aging just hasn’t happened to them yet.”
