Is artificial intelligence a passing fad or will it be present in the luxury and cosmetics sectors in the long run?

This week, fashion and technology meet at Viva Technology in Paris, and artificial intelligence (AI) takes center stage.

Although the technology is already widely used, there are concerns that it may stifle creativity.

“Our use of artificial intelligence is clearly of a long-term nature,” Gonzague de Pirey, director of Omnichannel and data at luxury conglomerate LVMH, told Euronews Next.

“We operate in the luxury industry. We don’t really follow fashion phenomena, we are very observant of it,” he said at the decorated LVMH stand, which leads through a so-called “garden of dreams” with carefully crafted, handmade white paper leaves.

One of its brands, Dior, is showcasing screens detailing how AI and AI are helping create display windows, visual product search and predict logistics flows.

It also has an AI platform that can aggregate customer comments from multiple channels, customer service interactions, satisfaction surveys, live shopping sessions, and more.

But LVMH isn’t getting caught up in the AI ​​hype.

“Ethically, we use AI not to replace our employees, but to elevate our team,” de Pirey said.

The company is also cautious when it comes to data. Employees can’t use public chatbots like ChatGPT, but LVMH has a more secure private AI system.

“The data of our employees and customers is something we have to be very careful about,” de Pirey said.

“It’s not just customer data, it’s also sensitive data for the organization. We are very, very careful, but we live in a world, in the luxury sector, where we create many things and our works themselves must be protected,” he added.

Does artificial intelligence kill or increase creativity?

However, he warned that artificial intelligence “could kill” this creativity.

“If we misuse or abuse AI, our creators will stop being creative. On the contrary, this tool has been proven to enhance the creativity of our designers, creators and art directors,” said de Pirey.

The use of artificial intelligence in supply chains is one area that could help fashion companies make collections available more quickly and perhaps more sustainably.

“We created this collection from scratch in 21 days,” said Raul Cruz Bonilla, vice president of French luxury artificial intelligence company Imki, referring to some of the denim ensembles on display.

He said it usually takes at least six weeks to produce these types of denim samples.

Imki’s technology is generative artificial intelligence for the luxury industry that is customized for customers to integrate their style.

The company claims that by integrating Imki into their processes, its customers gain turnaround time, from the first creative exploration, through the iteration and design phases, to the technical finalization of the product.

When creating images, samples can be verified so that they do not have to be made, saving material.

“It will never kill creativity. This will enhance creativity. It would kill people, stylists, who don’t know how to use artificial intelligence,” Cruz Bonilla said.

“It will stimulate your creativity. This will make you stronger. Karl Lagerfeld used to say: “I am a computer that holds all the images in my head.” Imagine having all the images from the internet you’re on and having access to Karl Lagerfeld’s brain.”

How the cosmetics industry uses artificial intelligence

When it comes to the beauty industry, artificial intelligence is nothing new.

“We started using artificial intelligence 10 years ago, and I think L’Oréal is a company that believes strongly in research because we started it with chemists over 115 years ago,” said Guive Balooch, the company’s global managing director for augmented beauty and open cosmetics innovation.

But he said that “probably half” of what they have created recently is AI-based “because it has tremendous value.”

Their virtual makeup simulators are based on machine learning, and their skin diagnostic technology is based on machine learning algorithms, Balooch told Euronews Next.

“We have new AI-powered launches like Beauty Genius, where we can use virtual beauty assistants that not only provide general answers, but use data enriched through our research and development, which allows us to actually get multi-factor advice in order to be able to give you the right recommendation,” he added.

As for the future of artificial intelligence in beauty, Balooch said it could help answer the century-old beauty question: What product is right for me?

“I think it’s because each person lives in a certain place, has a certain lifestyle and has a certain biology, and these things remain a mystery to people, and their accessibility will become much better with artificial intelligence,” he said.

“This is already happening, and we will be able to tell you whether you have a specific biomarker in your skin, whether retinol or one of the products will be suitable for your biology, and you will no longer have to guess whether or not a product is right for you.”