IBM and beauty company L'Oreal have announced a collaboration to leverage IBM's generative AI technology (GenAI) technology to uncover new insights in cosmetic formulation data, facilitating L'Oreal's use of sustainable raw materials and reducing energy and material waste. "This effort will contribute to helping L'Oreal meet its L'Oreal for the Future's target of sourcing most of its product formulas based on bio-sourced materials and/or the circular economy by 2030," the companies said in a joint statement on Thursday, January 16, 2025.
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Develop Custom AI Model
As part of the partnership, the companies "will develop a custom AI foundation model, engineered to significantly increase the ability of L'Oreal Research and Innovation teams to reach extra performance and consumer satisfaction in every cosmetic category and every region of the world."
This custom AI model will empower L'Oreal's researchers globally by providing insights into ingredient behaviours, enabling the creation of more sustainable and personalised cosmetic products.
"The collaboration combines L'Oreal's unparalleled expertise in cosmetic science with IBM's cutting-edge 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," IBM said in a joint statement.
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Strengthening L'Oreal's Digital Transformation
"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", said Stephane Ortiz, Head of Innovation Metiers and Product Development – L'Oreal Research and 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 and Digital Officer – L'Oreal Research and Innovation.
"This collaboration is a truly impactful application of generative AI, leveraging the power of technology and expertise for the good of the planet," said Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, Vice President of Europe and Africa and Director of IBM Research Zurich. "At IBM, we believe in the power of purpose-built, customized AI to help transform businesses. Using IBM's latest AI technology, L'Oreal 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."
"This alliance between highly specialized expertise in artificial intelligence and cosmetics seeks to revolutionize cosmetic formulation. It embodies the spirit of AI-augmented research, emphasizing sustainability and diversity," says Guilhaume Leroy-Meline, IBM Distinguished Engineer, Business Transformation Services CTO, IBM Consulting France.
AI to Help L'Oreal's Researchers Globally
The companies said that "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'Oreal, including the formulation of new products, reformulation of existing cosmetics and optimization for scale-up production – tools that will better equip L'Oreal's 4,000 researchers worldwide over the next several years."
Additionally, IBM Consulting will support L'Oreal in its aim to rethink and redesign the formulation discovery process, the official release said.
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Foundation Models
According to IBM, 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. These models have significantly advanced the field of natural language processing (NLP) technology over the past several years.
IBM stated that it is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language, in areas such as chemistry, time series and geospatial modalities.
Furthermore, IBM added that its "AI technology has the potential to augment L'Oreal's creativity in finding new cosmetic formulations to transform the beauty industry."
