Ulta Beauty has leveraged generative AI from Nvidia to provide customers with highly realistic previews of desired hairstyles and colors. To use the GLAMlab Hair Try On solution, shoppers on the Ulta website or mobile app can take a photo, upload a headshot or use a model’s picture to experiment with potential new looks. The hair color try-ons feature links to Ulta Beauty products, allowing shoppers to achieve their desired look in real life.
“Shoppers need to try out hair and makeup styles before they purchase,” said Juan Cardelino, Director of the Computer Vision and Innovation department at Ulta Beauty in a statement. “Hair and makeup are playful categories; virtual try-ons are a way to explore options that may be out of a customers’ comfort zone without needing to commit to a physical change.”
GLAMlab is Ulta’s first generative AI application, developed by its digital innovation team. To create the tool the team used StyleGAN2, a style-based neural network architecture for generative adversarial networks, a.k.a. GANS. StyleGAN2, developed by Nvidia Research, uses transfer learning to generate infinite images in a variety of styles.
“For our hairstyle try-on use case, we had to license the model for commercial use, retrain it and put guardrails around it to ensure the AI was only modifying pixels related to hair — not distorting any feature of the user’s face,” Cardelino explained.
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Looking ahead, Ulta plans to incorporate virtual trials for additional hair categories such as wigs, and also is exploring how the virtual hairstyle try-ons could be connected to in-store styling services. “Stylists could use the tool to show our guests how certain hairstyles will look on them, giving them more confidence to try new looks,” said Cardelino.
