YANN CHILVERS
Covalo, Zürich, Switzerland

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence is already strongly embedded into our daily lives. However, its full potential in the personal care industry remains unclear to many. Some see the technology as the panacea to many of the industry’s challenges. Others see it as a threat to their job and a way for some of the large players to further establish their dominance.
This article provides a perspective on the current state of the technology in the personal care industry and how it could evolve in the future. It also tries to bring people to rethink their relationship to Artificial Intelligence, and approach to innovation and collaboration more generally.

The potential of Artificial Intelligence (hereafter AI) nurtures imagination, some fears, and a fair number of misconceptions.

AI applications are already ubiquitous in our daily lives and often go unnoticed. From TV show recommendations, the auto-corrector on our phones, to our banking app’s monthly projections: the amount of data generated, collected, and processed every day has been growing exponentially to levels hard to comprehend. Today, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily (1): that’s 2.5 followed by 18 zeros.

But where does the Personal Care Industry stand in this frantic race to AI?

The industry has always projected an elevated level of innovation to the outside world. However, traditionally product innovation has mostly taken place at the level of formulations, textures, and packaging. Digital technologies took longer to gain adoption than in other industries. They have first been applied to drive operational efficiencies, streamline processes, and make companies more cost-effective. However, organisational silos, legal systems, a rather risk-averse and conservative culture ha ...