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L'Oreal's OpenAI deal puts Maybelline try-on, product discovery, and ChatGPT ads in play

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L'Oreal has announced a wide-ranging collaboration with OpenAI, unveiled at VivaTech 2026, that brings Maybelline's virtual makeup try-on directly into ChatGPT via L'Oreal's ModiFace AR technology. The deal spans consumer shopping tools, product discovery for brands like Lancome and Kerastase, advertising pilots (SkinCeuticals, CeraVe, Garnier), and R&D - including using OpenAI's GPT-Rosalind life-sciences model for skin-microbiome research. It lands as OpenAI reports ChatGPT at more than 900 million weekly users.

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A beauty giant goes all-in on ChatGPT

L'Oreal has unveiled a broad collaboration with OpenAI at VivaTech 2026, threading generative AI through its consumer tools, advertising, and research. The headline for shoppers: Maybelline New York's virtual makeup try-on is coming directly inside ChatGPT, powered by L'Oreal's ModiFace augmented-reality technology so users can test looks through a conversational interface. L'Oreal bought ModiFace in 2018, and says its Beauty Tech tools logged more than 120 million uses across 66 countries and 31 brands by the end of 2025.

Discovery and advertising inside the assistant

The deal is about distribution as much as novelty. L'Oreal will work with OpenAI to improve how its products surface in ChatGPT in the US, starting with brands including Lancome and Kerastase, and several of its labels - SkinCeuticals, CeraVe, and Garnier - are part of OpenAI's global ChatGPT advertising pilot, which places ads within AI-assisted consumer interactions. L'Oreal framed it as AI-native advertising at the moment of intent, though it hasn't detailed how those placements will look. The commercial logic is plain: the company says e-commerce grew double digits in 2025 and passed 30% of sales, while OpenAI says ChatGPT now has more than 900 million weekly active users and over 50 million subscribers - a storefront too big to ignore.

Beyond the storefront: research and internal tooling

The partnership reaches into the lab, too. L'Oreal says it is using GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI's life-sciences reasoning model, to help map the skin microbiome - the community of microbes living on skin - beginning with La Roche-Posay, to identify beneficial bacteria for new skincare. That sits alongside other AI bets: a Formulation Foundation Model being built with IBM, and earlier NVIDIA work on 3D product rendering and predictive formulation. Internally, OpenAI's latest model will power CreAItech, L'Oreal's in-house platform for generating brand images and video, part of a program under which the company says 73,000 employees have already been trained in generative AI. The stated aim is to put AI to work for both consumers and staff across marketing and research - and for OpenAI, it is another marquee enterprise foothold as it pushes deeper into commerce.

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