L'Oreal Signs OpenAI Deal to Cut Costs and Reshape Consumer Discovery

Quick Facts

L’Oreal’s in-house AI platform, CreAItech, has already cut production costs by 40% and generated 50,000 marketing assets.
Maybelline will bring virtual try-on to ChatGPT via L’Oreal’s ModiFace technology, while CeraVe, SkinCeuticals, and Garnier join ChatGPT’s global advertising pilot.
L’Oreal posted record revenue of 44.05 billion euros in 2025, with e-commerce accounting for more than 30% of sales.

L’Oreal and OpenAI announced a wide-ranging partnership at VivaTech in Paris on June 17, positioning the world’s largest beauty company as a test case for how AI can reshape both content production and consumer commerce at scale.

The deal has two main components: integrating OpenAI’s image model into L’Oreal’s internal CreAItech platform, and embedding L’Oreal brands directly into ChatGPT’s product discovery and advertising infrastructure.

CreAItech Gets an OpenAI Upgrade

L’Oreal began building CreAItech in 2024 and expanded it in 2025. The platform already pulls from models by Google, Adobe, Seedance, and Stable Diffusion. OpenAI’s text-to-image model is the latest addition.

Asmita Dubey, L’Oreal’s Chief Digital and Marketing Officer, said the decision came down to output quality. “They come with different strengths. We want to add OpenAI’s image model because the text-to-image rendering is so good,” she said.

CEO Nicolas Hieronimus told analysts earlier this year that CreAItech had reduced production costs by 40% and helped staff produce 50,000 marketing assets. More than 73,000 L’Oreal employees have been trained in generative AI and have access to tools including L’OréalGPT and personalized AI assistants. The platform serves the company’s 10,000-person global marketing team.

L’Oreal spent roughly 1.5 billion euros on technology in 2025. That figure reflects the scale of its AI buildout, which also includes a 2025 deal with Nvidia to improve GPU efficiency.

ChatGPT as a Commerce and Discovery Channel

The consumer-facing side of the deal puts L’Oreal brands inside ChatGPT in new ways. Maybelline New York will offer virtual makeup try-on directly through ChatGPT conversations, powered by ModiFace, L’Oreal’s augmented reality technology. The company is calling it a new model for real-time beauty discovery through AI.

L’Oreal will also supply OpenAI with up-to-date product information for inclusion in the models that power ChatGPT responses. The goal is better placement when consumers ask ChatGPT about skincare or makeup products in the United States, covering brands from Lancome to Kerastase.

SkinCeuticals, CeraVe, and Garnier are participating in ChatGPT’s global advertising pilot, testing AI-native ad formats tied to purchase intent moments.

R&D Applications

On the research side, L’Oreal is using GPT-Rosalind, an OpenAI reasoning model built for life sciences, to map the skin microbiome. The company says the work will help identify beneficial bacteria and speed development of the next generation of skincare products, starting with La Roche-Posay.

Emmanuel Marill, OpenAI’s managing director for EMEA, said the company is focused on helping L’Oreal accelerate both research and daily employee workflows.

Policy Guardrails

L’Oreal has banned AI-generated people from its marketing content. The company said CreAItech is not used to produce synthetic faces, bodies, hair, or skin. That policy has been in place since 2021 as part of its responsible AI framework.

Dubey also pointed to generative engine optimization as a growing priority. “You will appear in the answer layer if your content is right,” she said, signaling that AI-ready content strategy is now as important as search engine optimization was a decade ago.

Gartner analyst Greg Carlucci noted the timing. Nearly one in five consumers now use generative AI tools to find product information, and personal care brands are seeing website traffic decline as consumers shift to AI-led search. L’Oreal is moving to stay in front of that shift.