The Estée Lauder Companies and Microsoft Corp., a key investor in ChatGPT and home to Copilot (a system featuring OpenAI's ChatGPT embedded into Microsoft 365), are creating an AI Innovation Lab that will tap Microsoft's Azure (cloud computing) OpenAI Service.
The companies will collaborate on generative AI-driven services for 20 prestige beauty brands to boost consumer engagement and speed to market that has "local relevancy," per an official announcement.
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The Estée Lauder Companies envisions an organization that will respond rapidly to social trends and consumer demands using an "internal-facing generative AI chatbot" to support marketing. This conversational AI tech reportedly assists teams in sifting through the company's product and claim database to "launch locally relevant campaigns more rapidly."
Generative AI tools will also be used to assist product development teams to tap into emerging product and ingredient trends to launch to market faster.
"At ELC, technology is always in support of our enduring strengths of high-quality products and high-touch consumer experiences," said Jane Lauder, EVP, enterprise marketing, and chief data officer, The Estée Lauder Companies. "With Microsoft's generative AI tools and extensive expertise, we are able to leverage ELC's tremendous data to create more personalized consumer experiences and faster insights to action resulting in increased speed to market and stronger local relevancy. We look forward to continuing our close and collaborative partnership with Microsoft."
"Generative AI represents a significant opportunity for the beauty industry—creating more engaging customer experiences, getting products into the hands of consumers faster, developing new products more efficiently and sustainably, and much more," said Shelley Bransten, corporate vice president, global industry solutions, Microsoft. "We're proud to collaborate with The Estée Lauder Companies to provide not only a platform for AI innovation, but also deep partnership to bring these new innovations to life."