RIYADH: Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the beauty industry, both in Saudi Arabia and internationally.
Mohamed Hassan, CEO of Saudi-based Glamera, spoke to Arab News about how the company uses AI to recommend services to customers.
“The system analyzes user behavior and preferences to offer personalized service suggestions,” he said.
Founded in Egypt in 2020, where it still covers Cairo and Alexandria, Glamera then relocated to Saudi Arabia, where it covers Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Taif, Qassim, and Madinah.
Another technology implemented by some beauty companies is augmented reality, which allows users to ‘try out’ beauty products using their smartphones.
L’Oreal uses AI technology for a wide range of features including analyzing customer reviews and evaluating product formulas, Vismay Sharma, president of L’Oreal South Asia Pacific, Middle East, and North Africa, told Arab News.
The company’s Beauty Genius, which provides users with analysis, product recommendations and personalized routines for hair and makeup, is powered by generative AI.
L’Oreal has also created SkinConsultAI, which “measures skin aging” and offers personalized skincare regimens.
Sharma said that the company has collected a vast amount of data on hair and skin — more than 11 million gigabytes — which is fed into the AI engine.
“We have by far the highest amount of data … that is what we are now feeding into all of our AI engines such as LLMs (large language models), which is allowing us to do significant exploration of formula evaluation,” Sharma said.
Stressing how important it is to use technology responsibly, Sharma added that L’Oreal has been transparent about its commitment to not using computer-generated photos of results.
“We never use GenAI on our models, because that, in a way, is faking results,” he said. “There are very clear ethical rules that we put around the use of technology and I very strongly believe that if technology is in the hands of responsible people, using it responsibly can significantly enhance the quality of experience, the beauty journey of consumers, and the overall efficiency of an organization.”
