Ulta Beauty lets customers try out hair colors, styles virtually with generative AI
Ulta Beauty is partnering with a leading-edge artificial intelligence technology provider to let customers digitally experiment with new hair colors and styles.
The beauty giant is releasing a new mobile app experience called GLAMlab Hair Try-On that lets users take a photo, upload a headshot or use a model’s picture to virtually see near-instant, realistic previews of how different hair colors and styles would look. The solution is based on the Nvidia StyleGAN2 generative AI model.
Hair color try-ons feature links to Ulta Beauty products. The company says that people who use the virtual tool are more likely to purchase a product than those who don’t.
Ulta Beauty initially launched GlamLab, its augmented reality-based mobile app feature that enables customers to see how different beauty products would look on them, in 2019 with virtual cosmetics try-on.
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"Shoppers need to try out hair and makeup styles before they purchase," said Juan Cardelino, director of the computer vision and digital innovation department at Ulta Beauty. "As one of the first cosmetics companies to integrate makeup testers in stores, offering try-ons is part of Ulta Beauty’s DNA — whether in physical or digital retail environments."
GLAMlab is Ulta Beauty’s first generative AI application, developed by its digital innovation team. Available on the Ulta Beauty website and mobile app, the hair style and color try-ons rely on NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs in the cloud to run AI inference, which takes around five seconds to compute the first style a user requests and about a second each for subsequent styles.
The company next plans to incorporate virtual trials for additional hair categories like wigs and is exploring how the virtual hairstyle try-ons could be connected to in-store styling services.
"Hair and makeup are playful categories," Cardelino said. "Virtual try-ons are a way to explore options that may be out of a customer’s comfort zone without needing to commit to a physical change."
Ulta Beauty has long been establishing itself as a leader in providing realistic omnichannel shopping features that are based on virtual and augmented reality. Other examples include Sparked@UltaBeauty, a dedicated section of its e-commerce site featuring a 3-D virtual replica of a brick-and-mortar store, and an “in-store” experience online leveraging 360-degree interactive video from VR content platform VirtualAPT.
The retailer also offers an artificial intelligence (AI)-based skincare virtual beauty advisor on its e-commerce site. The virtual beauty advisor asks a series of dynamically generated questions and presents a set of personalized recommendations that can be further reviewed and then purchased.
Ulta Beauty opened 28 new stores, remodeled 27 stores and closed two stores during the third quarter of 2024, for a total of 1,437 stores.
