SEOUL, Korea – The Korean beauty industry is famous for its complex, multi-step regimen of foams, serums, foundations and masks that consumers snap up in pursuit of the enviable complexions of K-pop and K-drama stars.
Take Sion Kim, a 26-year-old Pilates instructor and fitness model. Kim has a seven-step skincare routine followed by an 11-step make-up ritual that she has down pat to 15 minutes every morning. Even Sundays.
She likes IOPE brand skincare because it’s affordable. She buys eye make-up from Innisfree because of its eco-friendly image but turns to Etude for its famous curling mascara. But even for a skincare and make-up devotee like Kim, keeping up with seasonal trends and what suits her skin type can be overwhelming.
“There are too many information sources right now, too many reviews, too many influencers saying different things,” Kim said. “Better for me if I get all the information from one source.”
Amorepacific Group, Korea’s biggest skincare and cosmetics conglomerate with more than 30 brands and 2024 sales of 4.3 trillion South Korean won or US$2.9 billion, would like to be that one source.
It is building a generative AI app with Microsoft’s Azure AI Stack called the AI Beauty Counselor (AIBC) that will soon go live on its online Amore Mall.
The AIBC will offer advice and recommendations based on a consumer’s previous purchases and Amorepacific’s proprietary expertise. It will add an online skin diagnosis tool later this year.
Perhaps most importantly, it will also draw on information gleaned from the chat. The more a consumer chats with the AIBC, the more personalized the advice. That includes how things are going after a sale.
“Just buying a product is not all,” said Seongbong Hong, chief digital technology officer of Amorepacific. “The customer should be taken care of and shown how to use it in the right way to get the results intended.”
Photo caption: Seongbong Hong, chief digital technology officer of Amorepacific. Photo by Seong Joon Cho for Microsoft.
Traditionally, salespeople at department stores or door-to-door have fulfilled that role. But these experts are scarce online. While beauty influencers abound, they usually promote specific products rather than what consumers want or need.
“We want to provide the same level of service that [customers] get offline in the online environment,” Hong said.
Hyper-personalization
Amorepacific was started 80 years ago by Suh Sungwhan, whose mother, Yun Dokjeong, bottled camellia oil by hand. It was the first Korean company to set up a cosmetics lab in the 1950s and to open a beauty counseling center in the 1960s. Today it is helmed by Suh’s son, Kyungbae Suh, and its well-known brands include Etude, Innisfree and Hera at the entry level, Laneige a step up and Sulwhasoo at the luxury end.
Amorepacific products are sold in more than 15 markets, the biggest being Korea, China and the rest of Asia Pacific. It is also making inroads in North America and Europe.
The organization was already using AI technology on its online Amore Mall to drive product search, recommendations and skin diagnosis when generative AI burst onto the scene about three years ago.
“We saw how we could make it [the online experience] a conversational service,” said Chikook Noh, Amorepacific’s AI Solutions Team Leader.
Chikook Noh, Amorepacific’s AI Solution Team Leader, sees the app advising first on skincare then on make-up in future. Photo by Seong Joon Cho for Microsoft.
The AIBC uses OpenAI’s GPT 4o and 4o-mini large language models on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to answer customer queries in the app. The underlying data is handled with Data Factory on Microsoft Fabric and AI Search functions in Azure AI Foundry.
The AIBC would help overcome a gap with the company’s existing online skin diagnosis tool on Amore Mall, Noh said. Currently consumers answer a series of questions such as “Is your skin oily? (Rate on a scale of 1 to 5)” and take a picture of their faces. It produces an overall score and dispenses advice on skincare and products.
This skin diagnosis tool has been used 2.5 million times online and in stores by consumers over the last four years. The IT department noticed an interesting thing – when used online via Amore Mall, “the transition to purchase tends to be on the lower side,” Noh said. But when used in a physical store, “the offline rate is very high because there is a conversation with the sales assistant.”
Sion Kim tries out the AI Beauty Counsellor app, which is being launched soon. Photo by Seong Joon Cho for Microsoft.
The AI app aims to provide the kind of advice that store sales assistants provide to drive sales. Inputs for the AIBC will include consumers’ purchase history, review history as well as online skin diagnosis. The AIBC will then converse with the consumer to determine their current skin status and what their concerns are.
The most important thing is the “hyper-personalization. I know you. I know what troubles you have. I know what makes you feel good,” Noh said.
Different beauty needs
The AIBC development team anticipates interest even from those who don’t use a ton of beauty products.
Hyejin Yoon, 35, is at the other end of the consumer spectrum from Kim, the Pilates instructor. A former Chinese teacher for middle and high-schoolers, she now stays home with her one-year-old baby on the outskirts of Seoul.
Before the baby, she used various Amorepacific brands like Hera, Primera and Hanyul. Now there’s only time for a face wash, a toner and moisturizing cream from Illiyoon, a fragrance-free brand aimed at people with sensitive skin. She shares the cream with her baby.
“I have no time to put on so many steps because of the baby,” she said.
Hyejin Yoon is a time-pressed new mother in Seoul who says she would use the AI Beauty Counsellor app to suggest products for her skin. Photo by Seong Joon Cho for Microsoft.
She noticed how her skin changed when she became a mother. “I feel my skin is getting drier and drier,” she said. “I am tired of having to keep trying different products.”
She briefly tried a test version of the AIBC app and said she could see herself using it, especially if it includes facial analysis.
The AI Beauty Counselor is Amorepacific’s first public-facing use of generative AI.
It follows the organization’s roll out in 2023 of a generative AI chat tool for internal use, also on Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. That has been used for everything from summarizing medical research articles to creating interior designs for pop-up stores to creating marketing content.
Since the AIBC involves interacting with the public, the IT team has also taken pains to anticipate potentially risky subjects such as politics and religion. If a consumer touches on these subjects, the AIBC will reply: “This is a question we cannot answer,” according to Hong.
In the future, the goal is for the AIBC to go beyond text to include voice and images and dispense advice not just on skincare but also make-up and health supplements.
Top Image: Sion Kim, a 26-year-old Pilates instructor, said she would use the AI Beauty Counsellor app to keep up with seasonal trends and what suits her skin type. Photo by Seong Joon Cho for Microsoft.
