Coming soon: The first AI model for creating sustainable cosmetics
IBM and L’Oréal, the world’s leading beauty company, announced a collaboration to leverage IBM’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology and expertise to uncover new insights in cosmetic formulation data, facilitating L’Oréal’s use of sustainable raw materials, for energy and material waste reductions. This unique effort will develop a custom AI foundation model engineered to significantly increase the ability of L’Oréal Research & Innovation teams to reach extra performance and consumer satisfaction in every cosmetic category and every region of the world. The formulation foundation model is believed to be a first-of-its-kind in the industry, redefining AI innovation at the intersection of beauty, chemistry and technology.
The collaboration combines L’Oréal’s expertise in cosmetic science with IBM’s artificial intelligence technologies for scientific discoveries, to unlock a future where science and technology can inform or help prioritize solutions that are both ecologically responsible and innovative. This effort will contribute to helping L’Oréal meet its L’Oréal for the Future’s target of sourcing most of its product formulas based on bio-sourced materials and/or the circular economy by 2030.
“As part of our Digital Transformation Program, this partnership will extend the speed and scale of our innovation and reformulation pipeline, with products always reaching higher standards of inclusivity, sustainability, and personalization,” says Stéphane Ortiz, head of Innovation Métiers & Product Development–L’Oréal Research & Innovation.
“Building on years of unique beauty science expertise and of data structuring, this major alliance with IBM is opening a new exciting era for our innovation and development process,” said Matthieu Cassier, chief transformation & digital officer–L’Oréal Research & Innovation.
“Using IBM’s latest AI technology, L’Oréal will be able to derive meaningful insights from their rich formula and product data to create a tailored AI model to help achieve their operational goals and continue creating high quality and sustainable products,” said Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, vice president Europe and Africa and director, IBM Research Zurich.
“This alliance … embodies the spirit of AI-augmented research, emphasizing sustainability and diversity,” declares Guilhaume Leroy-Méline, IBM distinguished engineer, Business Transformation Services CTO, IBM Consulting France.
The creation of this AI model will use a large number of formulations and component data points to accelerate multiple tasks to be performed by L’Oréal, including the formulation of new products, reformulation of existing cosmetics and optimization for scale-up production—tools that will better equip L’Oréal’s 4,000 researchers worldwide over the next several years.
Foundation models are a type of AI model trained on a broad set of unlabeled data, capable of performing various tasks and applying information from one situation to another. IBM is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language. IBM’s AI technology has the potential to augment L’Oréal’s creativity in finding new cosmetic formulations to transform the beauty industry.
