AI continues to extend its influence over the consumer landscape. Sephora, an international beauty heavyweight, has announced the launch of an AI-enhanced customer experience via its app on ChatGPT. Initially tested in the United States, this Sephora experience within ChatGPT is designed to help customers find the products that suit them through personalised advice and recommendations.
The Sephora and ChatGPT apps will connect for cosmetics-related queries – Sephora/OpenAI
Customers will be able to use their Sephora loyalty points and member benefits, such as free delivery and samples. Future updates will enable payments to be made and purchases completed directly within the app, for an optimal user experience. “With the increasing adoption of AI tools in our daily lives, apps on ChatGPT are pushing boundaries and influencing consumer behaviour on a global scale,” the cosmetics company said.
A catalogue within an algorithm’s reach
“At Sephora, we’re committed to offering our customers the best advice and a personalised selection of beauty products, whenever and wherever they want. Today, this translates into the launch of the Sephora app on new intelligent channels such as ChatGPT. We’re proud to bring this experience to the US market, with the ambition of rolling it out internationally,” says Anca Marola, Sephora’s global chief digital officer.
The system is being tested first in the United States, the birthplace of OpenAI. – Sephora/OpenAI
Nadine Graham, Sephora North America’s general manager of e-commerce, explains: “Consumers around the world are increasingly receptive to AI-based advice, as many are using technology to discover brands, trends, and beauty routines. By combining our e-commerce expertise with new AI tools, we’re creating seamless, conversational experiences that are both effective and useful for beauty consumers.”
A race for artificial intelligence
“ChatGPT is becoming an essential starting point for product discovery and decision-making. This new experience with Sephora explores how beauty product discovery and purchase can be more useful and personalised within ChatGPT,” said Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI. Suggestions will be tailored to the customer’s preferences, drawn from their Sephora Beauty Insider profile, if they choose to link their Beauty Insider account to the app. This once again raises questions about personal data protection. In the future, US users will also be able to complete their purchases directly within the app.
The Zalando Assistant is powered by ChatGPT but remains integrated within the Zalando app. – Zalando
This partnership between Sephora, a subsidiary of the LVMH group, and ChatGPT, owned by the American company OpenAI, is not the first of its kind in the field of customer experience. In 2024, Zalando launched its Zalando Assistant, a ChatGPT-based chatbot that provides product recommendations in response to a simple query. In collaboration with KAIST, South Korean cosmetics brand Amorepacific also broke new ground in 2024 by offering skin analysis technology and treatment recommendations.
ChatGPT enhances its shopping system with comparisons
The presence of companies and their catalogues within ChatGPT itself is already far removed from the early days of AI-enabled consumption, raising questions about how items are referenced. ChatGPT’s teams have addressed the issue by evolving its shopping system. The tool now offers product comparisons based on a query, making it easier to surface them. Each response includes a price, a description, a photo carousel, as well as customer feedback and the technical specifications of each item presented.
ChatGPT now assumes the role of intermediary between users and retailers, thanks to the ACP. – ChatGPT
This evolution is based on the extension of the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a technology that enables retailers to share their product data directly with ChatGPT. ChatGPT thus acts as an intermediary between users and retailers. Several major brands and retailers, including Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, The Home Depot, Best Buy and Wayfair, are already integrated, as are merchants already using the Shopify platform.
This marks an important step in the evolution of AI-supported digital commerce. Elsewhere, search engines are incorporating AI into their service portfolios, as seen with Google with Gemini and DuckDuckGo with Duck.ai. Finally, physical retail outlets could also invest in AI to improve profitability and remain competitive.
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