CLICHY, France and MONTREAL, Canada — L’Oreal and artificial intelligence company Automat Technologies on Wednesday announced their development of several beauty services that will be offered through Facebook’s Messenger app in the coming months.
The first of these initiatives that will launch in Canada is a gifting service built on Messenger’s platform. The company said its Beauty Gifter is a bot for beauty discovery and transactions that help shoppers find the right beauty box for friends by asking questions about the friend’s beauty profile that helps find the right brand, products and price.
“We are excited to pioneer this new field of conversational commerce and artificial intelligence and continue to build services that support our products and enhance our overall consumer experience,” ", L’Oréal chief digital officer Lubomira Rochet said. We believe that those new Messenger based services are truly solving consumers' pain points by leveraging the power of AI and bringing it to build personalized relationships with them. Automat is literally defining this new category of Conversational Marketing and we're excited to partner with them to advance the state of the art in this new field.”
To build on its work with Automat, L’Oréal said it would be opening a new AI center for excellence in Montreal.
"We've been incredibly impressed with how fast moving and nimble L'Oréal is and their ability to work effectively with startups,” Automat CEO Andy Mauro said. “Additionally, as the world's largest beauty brand, the level of care and consideration they show towards their customers and the how dedicated they are to constant innovation both in their beauty products but also their digital products is an inspiration for us both as Conversational Marketers and technologists.”