Beauty Tech champion

Technology provides a competitive edge for innovating in every industry. In January 2024, L’Oréal was the first-ever beauty company to deliver the keynote speech at the world’s most important tech event – the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was a highly visible stage to showcase our pioneering and leadership role in Beauty Tech and our next-generation innovations for more sustainable, personalised and inclusive beauty. These innovations included AirLight Pro – the first hairdryer powered by infrared technology by L’Oréal Professionnel designed for faster drying, less energy consumption and no hair damage, Beauty Genius – a Gen AI-powered personal beauty assistant, and HAPTA – the world’s first AI-powered makeup applicator for people with limited hand, wrist and arm mobility.

The keynote speech was viewed nearly a million times in less than 24 hours and relayed widely by the world’s media, boosting L’Oréal’s visibility and tech legitimacy. L’Oréal has also received a total of 18 prestigious CES innovations awards since 2017, including seven in 2024.

L’Oréal’s integration of Generative AI initiatives is demonstrating the potential for boosting efficiency, effectiveness and consumer engagement. Our Generative AI Beauty Content Lab – CreAItech – is supporting brands in their content creation process, generating thousands of images and augmenting campaigns, aligned with our principles of responsible advertising and trustworthy AI. Central to this is not using AI-generated ‘life-like’ face, body, hair and skin to support or enhance product benefits.

In 2024, L’Oreal was ranked No. 1 in advocated media with a 28% share of beauty influence. We are living through a thriving creator economy and the L’Oréal x Meta creator programme has led to more than 50 campaigns co-developed with artists using cutting-edge tools for 3D, AR, VR creation, resulting in over 100 million views across digital platforms for brands such as L’Oréal Paris, Lancôme and La Roche-Posay.

We are also using smart technologies to ensure the best advertising and promotion strategy. BETiq, which uses AI, is a data-driven tool allowing teams to optimise the allocation of resources across all beauty engagement touchpoints including media, with a proven ROI improvement.

Today, consumers struggle to find the right beauty products, with 73% feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices available. In 2024, L’Oréal unveiled Beauty Genius, a virtual personal beauty assistant available 24/7 via smartphone. It’s an AI and Gen-AI powered solution designed to provide a simple, safe and easy way to ask and learn anything about beauty. Beauty Genius offers personalised diagnoses and virtual try-on, tailored product recommendations drawing on 750+ skincare, makeup and hair colour products from L’Oréal Paris, as well as personalised responses to questions on intimate topics, such as skin and hair concerns.

Beauty Genius offers a highly relevant and intuitive service thanks to the Group’s extensive beauty knowledge, large learning models, skin diagnosis algorithms and the analysis of hundreds of thousands of real-life discussions in order to recreate the experience of a natural conversation with a beauty expert. A new generation of augmented services featuring Beauty Genius was launched in the US and stimulated more than 50,000 conversations in its first two months. It will be rolled out into other key markets in 2025.

Data is a powerful asset that allows L’Oréal to understand consumer needs more closely. We have created a range of offline and online tools and services to offer ultra personalised experiences across multiple categories, from haircare to skincare to makeup. For example, in 2024, we provided skin diagnosis and recommended beauty routines in-store in 56 countries through seven of our brands, including Lancôme, Prada and Kiehl’s. This personalised service is boosting conversion rates with up to 70% of consumers purchasing products after the experience. 

These diagnoses are permanently enriched and the Group collaborates with tech partners to capture additional skin health knowledge such as the Google Maps Platform to analyse anonymised location-based data (air quality, UV, weather) and its impact on skin, and Clue, a period-tracking app to better understand how menstrual cycles affect skin health.

Digital services bring valuable data and insights that fuel innovation for more tailored products and services. L’Oréal is committed to using these data responsibly within a strict governance framework and in full respect of data privacy and protection, guided by our Code of Ethics and other Group policies.

An estimated 50 million people have limited fine motor skills which impact their autonomy in taking care of themselves and can lead to feelings of exclusion. Their testimonies inspired us to dedicate our efforts on a solution so they could apply their own makeup. Created by L’Oréal for Lancôme, HAPTA is the world’s first AI-powered handheld smart makeup applicator for people with limited hand, wrist and arm mobility.

HAPTA is the result of intensive co-development involving accessibility and disability inclusion experts. Designed to create an accessible, comfortable and enjoyable makeup experience, it adjusts the device’s position in real time using self-stabilising motion controls to make it easy to place and apply lipstick. Powered by over 100 patents, HAPTA was a CES Innovation Award Honoree and named a TIME Best Invention in 2023.  

In 2024 Lancôme partnered with two para-athletes – Oksana Masters and Veronica Yoko Plebani – in a global campaign to highlight the importance of an inclusive beauty device for individuals who want to express themselves through beauty. HAPTA will be launched commercially in 2025.