EP 227: A Beautiful AI - How AI is being used in the Beauty industry

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One thing we haven't talked a whole lot on the Everyday AI show is how AI is already impacting the beauty industry. And not just how it's already impacting, but how it may impact it in the future. Because there's a lot, I think, of conversation to be had around artificial intelligence and beauty. So that is today's conversation and I'm extremely excited for this. And talk about how a beautiful AI and how AI can shake up the beautiful the beauty industry. All right, so thank you for joining us. If you're new here, my name is Jordan Wilson and this is Episode Everyday AI. We're a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people learn and leverage Generative AI to grow their company and to grow their careers. So if you're joining us on the podcast, thank you. As always, check out your show notes in the episode description for more information and to subscribe to our daily newsletter. And I like to tell people, if you haven't gone to your everydayai.com yet and subscribe to the our free daily newsletter, you are definitely missing out. It is one of the largest and best collections of generative AI education interviews that there is. Period. All right, so I'm excited for today's conversation and hey, we're technically debuting this, this live but sometimes people can't, can't make our 7:30am Central standard and that's okay. So this is technically a pre recorded version but we're bringing it to you live. I'll still be in the comments answering questions so still get them in if you have them. But with that I'm very excited to have our guest for today. There we go. So please help me welcome to the show Wayne Lu, the President and Chief growth Officer of Perfect Core. Wayne, thank you so much for joining Everyday AI.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Oh, absolutely. This is going to be a fun conversation. But you know Wayne, before we get started just I would love to hear a little bit more about you, your background and you know, kind of what you do at Perfect Core.

Yeah. So again, thank you. Really great to have this opportunity to talk about AI, especially in the beauty industry. My name is Wang Liu. I'm the president and chief course officer of a Perfect Corp. I'm also one of the co founder. So Perfect Corp has been in the business for about eight and a half years. We start From a startup company. And then in 2022 we went public listing the New York Stock Exchange. So basically we are technology company. However, our technology served a very interesting industry which is the beauty. Okay. So majority of products have been using by the beauty company, for example SC Lauder, you know, like LVMH of the world and also some of the retailer like Walmart. So they use our technology in a different aspect. So majority are using in the virtual try on. So you can of course, you know, try many different. The color, you know, I. The eye color and the lipstick. And also that's something we're getting to just recently is doing the skin analysis. We're using AI of course like a deep learning and all kind of thing to create a full, like a simple skin analysis. You know, just you know in not only in the beauty world, but also getting to the medical field. Yeah.

So yeah, and, and I, I definitely want to go down those roads Wayne. But but first, you know, I have a question. So you know, perfect core you said has been around for eight years. A publicly traded company. How has just AI even just for you all internally what you do in your day to day. You know, obviously artificial intelligence is not new. It's been around in industries for, for many decades. But I'm even curious from, from when you all first started eight years ago to today, how has your implementation of, you know, whether it's traditional, you know, AI and deep learning and machine learning to generative AI. How has your AI implementation internally changed throughout the years?

That's a great, great question, I have to say because people thought like AI equal to chat gbd, right. So it's just. But actually AI has a long history as you say. From day one we are using AI especially because we are dealing with a makeup, you know, to search. So you have to identify, you recognize your face. So the first thing is actually to understand your face. All the features point. It's a learning process. You know, we need to get many data for this machine to learn exactly like where your eye is and where your nose, where it lives and also understand the color, the color side of this, the product. So how we put the lipsticks on your lips and then consider the reflection of the light, consider you know, the environment. So that's why we can show the true to real. So that's the very beginning. We are using the AI of course learning your faces and then we get into shade matching because we have a. You know, you're dealing with the makeup so foundation your, your skin tone. So we need to Identify the shape. So we are using deep learning to learn all kind of different the skin tone. Okay. So then we can very clearly to recognize your skin. And then we do a matching. That's about the deep learning. You know, we use a lot. Then of course the skin, we, we have about like a 70,000 data point to begin with to build our very robust and solid skin analysis engine. Okay. In order to make a AI, I won't say no, like 100% no bias. They say almost impossible, less bias. We need to collect lots of data. Okay. Cross different aesthetic group and the skin condition. So and then we are doing simulation. Okay. So because, you know, what if, okay, so your skin look like this and then what if after treatment, what your skin will look like? We do some simulation. But simulation part actually is the generative AI. So we start with gan, you know, generative adversary network. But then right now we migrated to more like on the stable fusion side because I would say it's more efficient. And then also we get into fashion. You can see some of this fashion 3D object. How you create is a 3D object without really have the 3D object. So, so it's all learning and creation. So our company is more like evolution of AI. Start with machine learning, deep learning, generative AI. And also right now we try to create an interface using of course a large language model for the user can communicate what they really want to the machine. And then the engine can generate the beautiful look for them.

For those of you joining on the podcast, you know, here on the live stream, I'm kind of showing the Perfect Core website and kind of explaining some of these different things that, that Wayne's, you know, talking about. You know, everything from, yeah, you know, virtual kind of skin, you know, helping skin conditions, you know, trying on glasses virtually, you know, Wayne, at least where things are today, I just want to, I just want to get straight to it because I want to learn about what's coming, you know, in the beauty industry. But where do you see this going especially, right, because, you know, here at everyday AI, we talk a lot more about generative AI. So specifically, even there, how do you see generative AI, you know, changing things in the years to come specifically for the beauty industry?

Yeah, so actually that, you know, it's a very fundamental question for the developer like us, the generative AI save us lots of time, you know, it become more efficient. And previously, as I said, you go through this deep learning, of course you, you know, generative AI, you still need to learn, but it's more Powerful and also using this again. Right. So if you're using for example, one of the example is we create a hairstyle. If you're using gain AI, I mean you know, your generative diversive network, it probably take five days to come up with one special hairstyle. But if you're using stable fusion is one of the genius, probably just like a couple of hours you can create a hairstyle. So it's become more efficient and then on the productivity side it's, it's increased, you know, many fold. And also accuracy, you know, compared to what this, you know, more like again which we generate something is more accurate, it's more efficient. So that's why I guess for our customer, they really love to see that because they can get this, the product in the last, the shortened time and also cost last. So everything, you know, just because of the geni, it become more efficient and then the productivity increase a lot. So we will continue invest and our grand partner actually they are love to see this and then also they will continue invest.

So you know, I, I think we showed a lot of or you know, kind of referenced a lot of different use cases. So you know, things in the fashion industry, esthetics, you know, the whole beauty industry. But I'm wondering, you know, outside of that, Wayne, how can this technology like as a whole, so, so not even necessarily talking about perfect core specifically, but how can this technology as a whole be used for other things that maybe aren't even related to beauty? Right. So, so for medical conditions, et cetera, how can generative AI right now be used to help in some of those, you know, non beauty but related to beauty areas.

Yeah. So basically I think education and then empowerment, that's the 2, 2 thing I see from the generative AI. What I'm saying that is the first is education. For example, you know, if you are patient, you have some condition in your, your, your hair, I mean your face, you really don't know what happened. You just know your face is not perfect, something wrong, something. So you, you went to a doctor's office, dermatologist, you want to get some treatment and the doctor probably tell you something is wrong like a medical term. Okay. So they probably said, well your skin is, you know, it's like a 30% less compared to your demographic, compared to your same age. And you may have some, you know, sun damage here and there. But you know, the, the patient actually has no idea about what 30% mean what compared to average patient. And then what's the sound damage look like by using AI and also generative AI actually just scan your faces, right? Of course, through the machine learning. So right now this AI is more like they have a knowledge to become a dermatologist. They look at your faces, scan your faces and then we can graphically like a visually displace where your problem is. And then you know, 30%, right. So 30%, it will show you what's the perfect one and what does 30% look like? So it's more like education. So the patient, when they step into the clinic, they feel less vulnerable because they know and also the doctor probably can using, as I said, the generative AI to show them what if. Okay, so you know, you have lots of option, you can do this treatment, you can do that treatment. So for example, if you do this non invasive treatment, you probably give you a 40% increase. I mean, and then by if you want to do a surgery, it probably give you a 70% improvement. So then everything can be simulated. Okay, so you know what will happen. So that's why I think education is very important. And on the other side, because you possess knowledge, because this AI teach you, you know, you know what happened. So they empower you, you can start making your decision. Okay, so you probably say 40% improvement is good enough. So I really don't need to get into the surgery, I can do a non invasive one. Or if you really like to have a 70% improvement, you do the surgery, you know what will happen. So that's why I guess that can be a very. It's not really can be actually it's being using in the medical field. Yeah.

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You know, you bring up a lot of great points because, you know, there's obviously medical applications for AI and even for your products and services, but then there is just the beauty industry as well. And I, I'd say, you know, from an outsider observing, I think the beauty industry has changed a lot. You know, with social media, I think it's really heightened, you know, maybe people's expectations of beauty or even what they, what it means to be beautiful. You know, I guess what, what are the type of conversations, you know, that maybe you and your colleagues or others in related industries specifically around artificial intelligence and beauty. What are some of those conversations that you're having? Because I'm sure it's, it's, it's, you know, you have to strike a balance, right between you know, helping people, you know, feel more beautiful, but also not, you know, going too far and kind of pushing this that you have to, you know, do all of these things or you have to wear this makeup or you have to have, you know, this proceed, you know, this procedure in order to be beautiful. How do you balance that?

Yeah, so again, that's a great question. Is always a conversation among, you know, us, you know, in the internally and also with our client. You know, we've been dealing with all these big beauty company. So the thing here is what is really beauty? How you define that? Okay, but we call the Beauty 1.0. It means like they put a beautiful model on top of this poster or put a magazine, they tell you that's beauty. So everybody try to mimic, try to be more like that perfect figure. However, with the technology, especially AI, we talk about personalization. Okay, that's one thing which is very important is especially in the beauty world. So the definition of beauty is really on the eye of the beholder. So you start to define your own beauty, especially for this younger generation, like a Gen Z and even it's a Gen Alpha. They have their own idea about what the beauty look like and AI can really help them. For example, first is AI can be more like a consultation. Again, look at your faces and look at what your preference. They may come up with some recommendation which just for you. I always like to say AI can make a demographic of one because you are not compared to other people. You are just by yourself because you are unique. So that's why we do this in the beauty industry. And then we provide the tool, we provide the information at the end, at the end of the day you defy, you define your own beauty. Maybe you can use all this digital tool using the information we provide again, empowerment, education and you start to show yourself and then you know, you are put yourself in front of the, you know, say like the, the social media and then you use the digital tool to help you to create your own beauty. So that's why sometimes it's the opposite when people say, you know, people think about AI, you know, you try to perfect everything, it becomes fake. So that's probably just one thinking, but actually what happened in the beauty industry is empower people personalization and AI, especially Gen AI can really help you to do that.

You know, I'm, I'm curious Wayne, and this is a little bit outside of maybe your day to day thought process, you know, because you're, you're out there building and growing a large company. But you know, we kind of talked about how social media over the last decade or so has impacted people's perception of beauty and maybe even you know, them seeking out treatments for their skin, etc. How do you think you know AI images, right? Like I, I think over the last year that's really changed. I think you know, what people's perception of beauty maybe is, you know, there's been a lot of studies that you know, whatever you put in an AI image generator, whether you're using, you know, Dolly from OpenAI or Mid Journey or Stable diffusion, it's, it's, it's hard to make average looking people right. Like, like everything that you put in there on the other end, it just seems to make the person look a little better or more aesthetically pleasing. Like, like no matter what you ask for, I guess. What's your take on that and how it's, you know, societal impacts of just generative AI like that, you know, constantly putting out, you know, content where people just look a little too perfect.

Yeah. So actually, you know, I have to admit that can be a problem. Right. So you, you know, of course we try to push this personalization and then try to give you comfort than you, but in the other way. Usually using this generative AI will create a lot of image which is not real, but you look perfect. So it's the same thing. Like are you using ChatGPT? You ask them to write the article for you, but actually it's not what you are writing, so you are hiding behind that. So I will say that one is something we cannot avoid. Okay, so it's a, it also depends on how you're going to use the AI also, AI is a tool. So ideally AI can be the assistant we call the augmented intelligence. They can make you better, but you still don't want to lose yourself. So that's why I guess the education and then some of this, you know, thought leader. You really need to get people to understand AI is something we can help you, but it cannot replace you because the human factor is still very important. Right. So that's, you know, that's some negative side you cannot avoid that just happened. But on the positive side, that's why, you know, education and thought leadership and probably the program like yours can really get into like the right recognition. How we going to use the AI in the right way. So that's my take on that.

Yeah, you know, I'm, I'm curious, maybe we should have started here. But you know, like everything that you're talking about that you're doing at perfect core, it's very interesting. But you know, even with, with your background, right, like at Nvidia, like how did you stumble, you know, upon or maybe it wasn't stumbling upon, but how did you know kind of your own foray into perfect core and beauty. How did this even happen?

Yeah, so actually I said my journey is an interesting one. So I was the engineer. You know, I get a degree, it's engineer degree. And then my first job is with the intel and my last engineering job is with Nvidia. Okay. Then I think that engineering side is interesting, but I decided to seeking something more broader because I design things, so I design gpu. However, how to use, how this GPU being used in the real world is something I'm very curious about. So then I get into a company which actually it was a perfect course, the parent company called Cyberlink. So their company, software company, they are using all this hardware now then I have a better idea and understand how people using this semiconductor, you know, equipment and how they use it in the real world. So and then I get interesting and then you know, our, which is my boss and then also my longtime friend and mentor Alice Chen, who is our CEO. She was the, the, the CEO, founder of Cyberlink. And then she want to find another company. Interesting is she want technology to serve more women. Okay. Because herself is a female. So they say why don't we get something fun and for a woman and then immediately think about makeup. And then she says, well actually let's try something like this, okay? Using technology and the makeup to serve the, the, you know, the women, female community. And then I just get assignment. So our CEO said You know, go ahead and let's do this venture. They start this company. That's how I get into it. So personally, you know, I have no idea about makeup. I'm not wearing makeup. I have no idea. But we just interestingly we get into this journey also. It is a magic journey. So we are getting to beauty and right now establish ourselves as the leader in the beauty technology.

Oh, it's. It's such a good story, right? Like yeah. Probably never would have guessed 10 years ago. No that you would be my, my. That you're in now.

My father want me to be more like a NASA scientist so.

Well, okay, so. So let's just even go there. You know, as. As we kind of wrap this conversation. So, you know, 10 years ago maybe you didn't think that you would be here, you know, helping to, to drive really the beauty industry forward when it comes to technology and AI. So even maybe as you look at the next couple of years or the next five or ten years. I know it's hard, right? But where do you see specifically with AI, specifically with generative AI, where do you see the beauty industry going?

Yeah. So I will say the AI it's not like a. It's just like it was day, it's not like a one shot. And I'll say something like a metaverse, right? Because when we see metaverse, it's really. The application is a little bit shaky. But AI is really solid. Because I feel a couple of things. First is it really increase the productivity. As I mentioned, we are engineering using AI to help them to design. That's why I guess increase the productivity is really one thing. Not only in the beauty industry, but also in general and especially in the beauty. Because we create all this tool which will help is that work with the human side by side. That's why I'm always augmented intelligent. So they really helps the beauty industry be more efficient. In the meantime increase the productivity. And then we are not really replacing human because we still work with the human together. That's why I think first thing is it will stay. Then the second thing is how disability engineers using AI at the end of the day they want to see return. It doesn't matter how fun it is. You can create some fun stuff. But for the business perspective, they want to see this tool be useful. They generate couple of return on the business measure. First is a return of investment conversion rate. So if AI can help to convert, of course they will be good. And if AI can help to improve the user experience, get users stay and then get probably using generative AI to educate the customer. So definitely that's one thing the business is looking at. And then also the third thing is how to using AI to help their product or their industry become more sustainable. What I'm saying that is for choosing the ingredient. Because if you get some allergy or something with some kind of ingredient, potentially AI can tell you for the product you are trying to choose, you're using would they have anything not necessarily harmful, but not suitable for your skin. So they will give you this recommendation, you can use a better cleaning, more like a clear resource. I mean the ingredient. And also by using AI plus ar, of course, you try something virtually, you don't really need to get into the tester. You can try virtually as many as you like. You can create and then reduce the waste. Because if you get something which is really you don't like, you return it. And in the beauty industry, if you return something, they store it away. It's no way to recycle things. So they just throw it away. So that's why by sheer amount of, you know, saving the tester. With the AI and AR, we have actually a research, it probably saved roughly 1.2 million kg of carbon dioxide. And then one of our partner, you know, Carl, is a Japanese company, they're using artificial intelligence and architecture to help a customer to try the hair color instead of give the sample. They save 57 tons of plastic. Okay, so all aspect is a positive about. Of course we talk about, you know, some negative thing. But I guess at the end of the day, people like us, who we create AI, people like you used promote AI. We have the responsibility to make AI on the right track. Okay, so how you train AI, how you use AI is really worse. You will have a different track. If you just using AI in some, I would say evil way, they may cause harm. Right? So that's why I think I feel more responsible social responsibility right now. Since we are the one who create using AI to start creating lots of tool, it can help people. That's the goal. We don't want to hurt people. So that's why, you know, we have the responsibility on the AI side.

I love that what you just said right there, I think is a perfect takeaway and a great way to wrap today's show by just talking about, yes, you can use AI for growth and productivity. I mean, you're a perfect example of that president of a public company. But you can also do it in a sustainable and responsible way. I love that message and thank you, thank you so much, Wayne, for joining the Everyday AI show to tell us, you know, to take us both on your journey of how you're using AI at perfect core, but also the future of the business, you know, the future of AI in the beauty industry and how others can use it as well. So we very much appreciate your time and for sharing your story.

You are very welcome. I really enjoy the conversation. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me again.

All right. Hey, thank you again, Wayne. And as a quick reminder, don't worry, I'm still in the comments. If you have any questions, hit me up. Maybe Wayne might be able to stop by and answer some questions, some as well. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. And as a reminder, go to your Everyday AI dot com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. We'll be recapping today's episode and more. Thank you for joining us and we hope to see you back for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

All. Thank you.

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