Dive Brief:
- L’Oréal is collaborating with IBM to design an AI model that will help the beauty company meet sustainability goals, the companies said Wednesday.
- L’Oréal will use the model to rethink existing formulas, incorporate renewable ingredients into formulation processes and develop sustainable product lines.
- “Building on years of unique beauty science expertise and of data structuring, this major alliance with IBM is opening a new exciting era for our innovation and development process,” said Matthieu Cassier, chief transformation and digital officer for L’Oréal research and innovation.
Dive Insight:
L’Oréal kicked off last year by leaning into AI and data science. The company said it expected AI to play a key role in driving growth for the company as the technology became more ingrained in workflows.
Reaching sustainability targets was another key priority.
While generative AI use brings its own set of environmental challenges, business leaders want the technology to improve sustainability, too. Vendors using AI in tools designed to decarbonize data centers, perform ESG analysis and improve sustainability tracking.
Even with the potential benefits, the technology can also dampen progress.
Google said it was struggling to reduce emissions in its annual environmental report published in July, pointing to high compute intensity and technical infrastructure investments tied to its AI efforts.
“The reality is that increased data center use will lead to increased CO2 emissions to generate the needed power in the short-term,” Gartner VP Analyst Bob Johnson said in a statement in November. “This, in turn, will make it more difficult for data center operators and their customers to meet aggressive sustainability goals relating to CO2 emissions.”
