IBM and L’Oréal partner to leverage AI to advance sustainability

Global beauty company L’Oréal is collaborating with IBM to leverage the technology giant’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to advance the creation of sustainable cosmetics.

In a statement, the two companies said they will work together to build the first AI model that will uncover “new insights in cosmetic formulation data, facilitating L'Oréal's use of sustainable raw materials, for energy and material waste reductions”.

The aim is to “significantly increase” the ability of L'Oréal’s research and innovation teams to reach extra performance and consumer satisfaction in every cosmetic category, while also helping the beauty company boost sustainability and efficiency.

Stéphane Ortiz, head of innovation métiers and product development at L'Oréal research and innovation, said: As part of our Digital Transformation Programme, this partnership will extend the speed and scale of our innovation and reformulation pipeline, with products always reaching higher standards of inclusivity, sustainability, and personalisation."

The creation of the 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 optimisation for scale-up production.

In addition, IBM Consulting will support L'Oréal in its aim to rethink and redesign the formulation discovery process. Understanding the behaviours of renewable ingredients in cosmetic formulas will help L'Oréal build out more sustainable product lines with greater inclusivity and personalisation for its consumers.

IBM adds that the foundation models are a type of AI model trained “on a broad set of unlabelled 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, and IBM is pioneering applications of foundation models beyond language, in areas such as chemistry, time series and geospatial modalities”.

Alessandro Curioni, IBM Fellow, vice president of Europe and Africa and director of IBM research Zurich, added: "This collaboration is a truly impactful application of generative AI, leveraging the power of technology and expertise for the good of the planet.

"At IBM, we believe in the power of purpose-built, customized AI to help transform businesses. 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."