Estée Lauder Companies forms AI innovation lab

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The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) and Microsoft have teamed up to open an artificial intelligence innovation lab designed to use generative AI across ELC’s more than 20 beauty brands, including Clinique, Mac Cosmetics and namesake Estée Lauder.

The core goals are to develop tools that help internal teams more quickly identify and respond to trends and to use that data to inform product development and improve customer experiences.

Projects in development already include an internal chatbot that enables brands to pull authorised product claims; this means that when a marketer wants to quickly respond to a trend or need, such as “fine lines and wrinkles”, they can search a database that surfaces the areas that certain products are proven to legally and scientifically address. The hope is that this will ultimately enable brands to more quickly launch more effective campaigns that align with localised, emerging trends, according to a company spokesperson.

Additionally, the lab is working on ways to use generative AI to help scientists more quickly respond to emerging product and ingredient trends, with the aim of faster product research and development.

The virtual lab is a joint partnership with Microsoft, with whom ELC has worked since 2019. Existing employees from both companies will work in the lab, with some upskilling of ELC employees. The specific tech used will include Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, which enables developers to integrate OpenAI models into their applications to create custom experiences, such as better bots, recapping call centre conversations, creating personalised ad copy and automating claims processing.