Get Ready to Glam: AI and Hyper-Personalization Transforms Beauty Brands

Photo by Sophie Smith on The Industry.Beauty

With AI on the rise and revolutionizing nearly every aspect of our lives, beauty brands are now hopping on the AI train to get an edge in the competitive marketplace. How, you may ask? Through hyper-personalization, beauty brands such as Prose and Optune are leveraging the power of technology to feed into the ‘me-centric’ trend, which ensures that every customer has the most personalized experience. 

First off, what is hyper-personalization? Hyper-personalization is how companies use AI and real-time consumer data to tailor content to each individual customer. Think Netflix showing you movies and TV shows that you may like, or Amazon giving you recommendations on what to buy based on your previous purchases. These large-scale companies are taking marketing and customer personalization to the next level through the utilization of customer data, and beauty brands are taking inspiration from these big companies to maximize their market opportunity. 

Retail stores like JC Penney are strengthening the online shopping experience for beauty products through partnering up with Revieve, which offers diagnostics technology and AI-powered products where customers get personalized skincare recommendations with the click of a selfie. The user is also directed to surveys and questionnaires, which enables Revieve to use an algorithm to come up with the perfect product for each customer, down to the skin tone and texture. What once was a complicated hassle that required numerous store visits and assistance from a middle man has transformed into a simple selfie and survey. Skincare brands have set their sights on removing skincare bias and believe that the main way to accomplish this is through hyper-personalization. Take Revea for instance. Revea has raised over $6 million to create their mobile app, Precision Skincare, where members can find what their skin needs — this in turn will also reduce wasteful mass manufacturing.

However, beauty brands’ hyper-personalization is transcending the realm of the dot com and is hitting brick-and-mortars as well. Let’s look at the brand, Nude. Nude has created the Skin Nutrition Bar, which involves members using mounted iPads at the store to create member profiles and understand their skin type. From a suggested dietary plan to cosmetic products, customers get the full package at the Nutrition Bar. Taking it to the next level, companies in K-beauty even plan on leveraging AI and robotics to provide a facial recognition technology that creates personalized lip and foundation shades with robotic arms. 

AI is doing wonders for the beauty world and ensuring a better future for inclusivity of all skin types. However, as skincare and cosmetic brands continue on this journey of developing advanced technology and apps, it’s important to consider the privacy and identity concerns that come with it.