L'Oréal Invests in 'Agentic' AI for Commerce
L'Oréal is among the beauty conglomerates investing in AI-powered retail tools that bridge online and offline shopping. The company is focusing on the development of "agentic" solutions, which are AI agents capable of providing end-to-end shopping support. This technology is poised to transform how consumers discover and purchase beauty products.
- L'Oréal is developing a range of agentic AI tools beyond retail applications, including an internal platform called L'Oréal GPT, which is a custom-built generative AI assistant used by thousands of employees for tasks like video analysis and content creation. - For consumers, the company has launched "Beauty Genius," an AI-powered personal beauty assistant available 24/7 online and on WhatsApp. This tool provides tailored advice and product recommendations, having already engaged in over 400,000 conversations with users. - The company's internal "CREAITECH" lab utilizes generative AI to accelerate marketing content production, enabling teams to generate localized campaign visuals and storyboards from text prompts in hours rather than weeks. In collaboration with Google, this lab can produce up to 50,000 images and over 500 videos monthly. - L'Oréal is also applying agentic AI to its media strategy, using a tool named Tidal to automate paid media buying. A 2023 rollout in the Nordics resulted in a 22% increase in media efficiency and a 14% improvement in campaign effectiveness. - In research and development, L'Oréal is collaborating with IBM to create a custom generative AI model for product formulation. This AI is intended to help over 4,000 researchers analyze ingredient data to speed up the creation and reformulation of products. - The investment in "agentic" solutions is part of a broader digital transformation that includes partnerships with major tech companies like Google and NVIDIA to enhance capabilities in 3D product rendering and personalized marketing. - To manage its growing e-commerce presence on platforms like Amazon and Sephora.com, L'Oréal uses agentic AI to automate content updates, monitor the quality of listings, and ensure pricing consistency across different regions. - The company's venture capital fund, BOLD (Business Opportunities for L'Oréal Development), has also invested in other tech-focused companies, including the Swiss longevity biotech company, Timeline, and Debut, a US biotech firm that can create over 7,000 ingredients for cosmetics and packaging.
