Beauty Brands Are Tapping Into Generative AI

In the age of TikTok trends and personalised everything, beauty giants are turning to their newest (and smartest) employee: generative AI. L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, and Unilever are diving headfirst into the GenAI wave, weaving it into marketing, R&D, and retail in ways that are more high-tech than highlighter.

And it’s not just for show. A McKinsey report in January estimated that generative AI could unlock up to $10 billion in value for the global beauty industry. Now, six months later, beauty’s biggest players are hustling to make that prediction a reality.

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Image courtesy of loreal.com

Take L’Oréal, which has teamed up with IBM and Nvidia to build an AI content lab while simultaneously pushing towards sustainable formulas through its L’Oréal for the Future initiative. Over at Estée Lauder, their collab with Microsoft aims to speed up product development cycles, while Unilever has quietly launched over 500 AI tools across its global business.

“The beauty industry is catching up very quickly, especially over the past 12 months,” says Guilhem Souche, senior advisor at Sthrive.AI and ex-L’Oréal exec. “Beauty has unique opportunities to leverage [AI], particularly in terms of personalization, content creation, and consumer engagement.”

Melissa Alcocer, founder of market intelligence agency Inluxury, breaks it down further: “Traditional AI analyses data. Generative AI creates – from content to product concepts to entire routines.”

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The current face of L’Oreal, Kendal Jenner. Image @lorealparis
via IG

And this shift is already showing up IRL. Coty is churning out 1,000 AI-generated assets in minutes, while E.L.F. is testing GenAI voice search and AR campaign tools. L’Oréal even flaunted AI-generated virtual hosts at VivaTech 2025, fresh from the Chinese livestream scene.

But while the tech is dazzling, there are risks. From IP leaks (think: your brainstormed perfume name mysteriously launching elsewhere) to heavy regulations in markets like China and the EU, brands are treading carefully. “If your teams use open AI tools without safeguards, you could unknowingly seed proprietary ideas into public models,” Souche warns.

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Image @nvidia via IG

There’s also the matter of data privacy – especially with facial scans and skin diagnostics. Alcocer reminds us that “transparency, inclusivity, and digital wellbeing are becoming just as important as technological capability.”

Still, investors are circling. “From real-time skincare diagnostics to AI-generated visuals and marketing assets, the message was clear at VivaTech 2025,” Alcocer says. “VCs are backing platforms that embed generative AI throughout the product lifecycle.”

In short, AI is no longer just touching up your selfies – it’s reshaping beauty from shelf to screen.