Long read: How AI-powered beauty delivers hyper-personalized products & sustainable solutions in real time

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping the beauty industry, pushing the boundaries of personalization, sustainability, and ingredient innovation. From hyper-personalized skin care and AI-driven hair diagnostics to eco-friendly packaging solutions, AI is shifting how brands develop products and connect with consumers.

According to Eleonora Mazzilli, Trend Localization & Business Development Director at Beautystreams, "AI-powered skin assessments allow for detailed analyses of health and skin metrics," enabling beauty brands to offer tailor-made solutions based on real-time data. In this CosmeticsDesign Q&A, Mazzilli discusses how AI is driving efficiency in product formulation, addressing environmental impact, and revolutionizing the beauty experience across multiple categories—from skin care to make-up and hair care.

CDU: What are the key benefits AI brings to the development of personalized beauty products? ​

Eleonora Mazzilli (EM)​: As personalization continues to be a rising consumer demand in the beauty world, AI can prove to bring further capacities to individualized products and services. With the help of AI, beauty brands can offer expert scientific precision and deliver hyper-personalized skin care products and experiences by leveraging precise data across consumer segments.

Advanced innovations in data science, artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and digital analysis allow for personalization in beauty to go a step further, giving consumers a more individualized, tailor-made approach to beauty, with inclusive products based on real-time measurements.

AI-based skin assessments allow for detailed analyses of health and skin metrics to be performed and will continue providing insights into the future of hyper-personalized skin care, health, and wellness. With advances in deep learning, predictive analytics, and new AI features, brands can now offer a detailed analysis of skin metrics such as redness, acne, texture, hyperpigmentation, melasma, wrinkles, and skin sagging.

Deep-learning algorithms also track measurements of stress, sleep patterns, and environmental exposure in real time, to pinpoint areas of improvement and offer hyper-personalized solutions.

The make-up and nail industries are also being transformed by AI capabilities, which are paving the way for a range of innovations, allowing the future of these categories to be more personalized, accessible, experimental, and imaginative than ever. AI-powered skin analysis tools can provide personalized make-up recommendations by assessing individual skin types and conditions, ensuring make-up not only looks good but also promotes healthier skin. The technology also makes color analysis more accurate and personalized than ever before as AI-powered color analysis tools help to analyze skin tones and undertones, and eye and lip colors to better determine the colors and looks that fit consumers’ features and recommend hyper-personalized products and shades.

With AI-powered scalp diagnostic devices, it is now possible to provide accurate, in-depth, and real-time hair analyses from consumers’ individual hair and scalp characteristics and subsequently recommend personalized treatments. Personalized styling routines even go a step further with AI-powered hair styling devices that use algorithms to collect data on users’ individual hair characteristics and preferences, enhancing the styling experience and providing customized recommendations on temperature settings, styling techniques, and product routines.

Meanwhile, advancements in hair color systems are among the new evolution of the salon experience as AI can help dispense millions of custom color formulations, allowing professional hair colorists to create their own bespoke hair colors.

CDU: In what ways is AI helping cosmetic companies address sustainability and environmental impact? ​

EM​: Artificial intelligence can help shape the future of packaging design. AI-powered algorithms can analyze data that measures carbon emissions, energy and water usage, and ways to reduce packaging and reuse materials, allowing the beauty industry to make informed choices about the most sustainable materials and the best eco-friendly packaging solutions.

With the aim of advancing sustainability goals, the beauty industry can look to artificial intelligence to create smart eco packaging solutions, reduce its carbon footprint, optimize energy consumption, reduce waste, and upgrade recycling. Unilever and Alibaba in 2021 partnered to create recycling machines in China that use artificial intelligence to automatically identify and sort plastic packaging.

The pilot program for this scheme, which was a response to the Shanghai government’s plan to create a country-wide plastic management system, saw 20 recycling machines installed in offices and community spaces in the Chinese cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou.

Artificial intelligence could also refine supply and demand patterns in fragrance development, identifying which ingredients will have the least negative environmental impact. Osmo is a start-up based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, spun out of Google Research, which has developed software to “predict the scent of molecules based on their structure alone,” Wired reports.

In the near future, the publication writes, Osmo wants to design molecules for the flavor and fragrance industry that are “potent, allergen-free, and biodegradable,” to solve the issue of natural ingredients that are endangered and whose harvesting can harm the environment.

CDU: How do you see AI continuing to evolve and influence the beauty industry over the next decade? ​

EM​: As AI becomes more sophisticated, we can expect the technology to go even further by understanding consumer preferences, emotions, and diversity. Advanced machine learning models will be able to create new beauty products by mapping facial features and leveraging real-time data that tracks elements such as lifestyle patterns, regional subcultures, weather conditions, and social media trends, allowing companies to deliver hyper-personalized products and services that cater to individual preferences.

Meanwhile, generative AI systems such as ChatGPT are set to become powerful co-creators in the development of new products and experiences. By analyzing consumers’ preferences and comments, generative AI can support brands in identifying new needs and develop products and services accordingly.

In dermatology, technologies are set to help promote next-generation care namely personalized, predictive, preventive, and participatory care targeted at maintaining skin health. Advancements in image analysis, deep learning techniques and generative AI now allow experts to identify, analyze, and interpret skin conditions with a high degree of accuracy, pointing to the possibility of innovation in skin and body health monitoring and diagnosis, prediction of skin concerns, and hyper-personalization.

Technological evolutions are already becoming key in tracking one’s health and understanding unique factors at play. Advancements in tracking and measurement tools will change how the health of the skin and body, alongside well-being, are monitored and improved. Wearable technologies that track one’s lifestyle, environmental exposure, and molecular information in real time are fast becoming tools to map and help prolong the span of good health.

Meanwhile, the discovery of biomarkers that measure various bio-signals from the skin and body is proving to be a key area of research in predicting skin diseases and monitoring overall health.

AI technology, meanwhile, will allow brands to elevate packaging personalization to new heights. By harnessing consumer behavior and preference data, and drawing on market and social media trends, AI could assist in designing packaging with materials, sizes, shapes, colors, graphics, messaging, and aesthetics all tailored to individual needs.

Brands could utilize AI algorithms to create smart and dynamic packaging that spotlights personalized designs, messaging, and promotions to target specific consumer segments with precision.

Conversational AI, enabling real-time, human-like interactions with consumers, will also take in-store and digital personalization to the next level. Smart AI assistants acting as beauty advisors will be able to understand consumer needs and personalities and answer their demands, alongside providing hyper-personalized recommendations and tutorials, application guidance, or digital consultations, from either the comfort of their homes or in store.

CDU: How is AI revolutionizing the discovery of new cosmetic ingredients, particularly in terms of speed and accuracy? Can you share examples like Nuritas's PeptiYouth? ​

EM​: We think AI-powered ingredients will drive innovation within the beauty industry, bringing innovation and efficiency to formulation processes. Artificial Intelligence is starting to support the cosmetic industry by reshaping the way new ingredients are discovered, formulated, and brought to market.

The integration of AI technologies offers numerous advantages, from accelerated innovation to personalized product development. As AI advancements could predict the next big ingredient trends; identify ingredient benefits, nutrients, colors, and textures; and provide data on product formulation and consumer preferences, the capabilities of integrating this technology into raw material research show promise.

Despite serious challenges, the ongoing collaboration between AI experts, cosmetic scientists, and regulatory bodies holds some promise of a more efficient and sustainable future for cosmetic ingredient creation.

Pairing science and biology with powerful artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms could unlock the next generation of skin care and nutrition ingredients. The discovery of new ingredients is now made possible by employing artificial intelligence computer vision and deep learning applications, which can investigate the potential ingredients that exist in nature, to then reverse-engineer such ingredients.

Using a proprietary advanced artificial intelligence, the US skin care brand Revela tested five million molecules for safety and efficacy to design its Fibroquin Essence skin treatment. Discovered by Revela's AI engine, Fibroquin is a lab-tested and clinically-tested skin molecule that has been patented for its unique ability to tone and lift mature skin, Revela says.

Revela notes that the molecule supports the skin’s pro-collagen biopathway, restoring elasticity and enabling skin to look and feel plump and lifted. The brand’s AI engine means that Revela’s scientists can sift through millions of molecules to discover new ingredients.

CDU: Can you elaborate on the ethical challenges associated with AI in the beauty sector, such as job displacement and data privacy? ​

EM: While AI is predicted to bring myriad advances to society, there is a risk that the new world it creates will result in both haves and have nots, when it comes to how people’s jobs and futures are affected. Goldman Sachs in 2023 predicted that up to 300 million full-time jobs globally could be “exposed” to automation, if generative AI delivers on its “promised capabilities.”

In the US, the bank forecasts that the sectors most affected will be office and administrative support, legal, and architecture and engineering. It’s predicted that this automation would impact developed markets more than emerging markets.

Given the sectors that AI is set to impact, this could underscore any gaps between rich and poor, which are likely to correlate with those who will benefit and be negatively impacted by AI.

As we progress further into this era of digital acceleration, the implications of AI's integration into daily life are becoming more pronounced, prompting both enthusiasm for its potential and concern over its societal impact. These mixed sentiments are likely to heavily influence consumer behavior, with a call for balancing innovation with ethical considerations, human connections, and personal well-being.

As such, the coming years will see a complex interaction between embracing advanced technology and advocating for the preservation of human-centric values.

While technology and artificial intelligence are transforming our ways of communicating, working, creating, and innovating, a recent survey shows that the majority of consumers voice fears concerning this evolution, including AI causing job loss and misinformation for example. In this context we can expect that certain consumers will want to put the human (back) into the center, putting value on artisanal and local production, focusing on the people behind businesses, and empowering minorities.