On a gloomy November day, I drove from Boston to a large corporate development in Beverly, Massachusetts. I walked down a long, narrow hallway and entered a clinical-feeling, medium-sized white room full of robot kiosks. I was there to visit SmartSKN Labs, and these robots were going to make me a hyper-personalized, fully AI-created line of skin care called K-AI.
I’m always on a quest for the best, most effective products. I want powerful ingredients and effective delivery systems. I want science, and so does everyone else, per the oversaturated amount of innovation-based skin care in a $182 billion global market. Demand is off the charts. Unsurprisingly, this is where AI enters the chat.
The role of AI in personalized beauty is not new. Skin care brands like Proven and hair care brands such as Prose are already using AI algorithms to help consumers optimize their routines. SmartSKN is doing something I have yet to see — leveraging AI for production itself, on-demand — and if it gains traction, it could revolutionize the beauty industry, while also improving our skin health and reducing our carbon footprint.
At the lab in Beverly, Val Neicu, co-founder of SmartSKN Labs, shared big dreams for the robots’ future. First, I wanted to see what they could do.
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How it works
Everything starts with the Muilli AI Dermascope. This intelligent device examines skin at a microscopic level using 60X magnification and captures high-resolution images of its surface to later analyze using artificial intelligence. Honestly, no one should suffer the ego death that is seeing their flaws so magnified, but alas, beauty is pain. With dermoscopic photography comes something called a bioimpedance measurement, which measures moisture and oil levels in the skin and plays a critical role in the overall analysis.
The dermascope at SmartSKN labs that will develop my skin care products with the help of AI.
Then, in the SmartSKN app, I completed a short questionnaire about my skin type, concerns and lifestyle. This helped the Smart SKN AI better understand my habits so it could effectively create my personalized skin care line. It’s wide-ranging too; this system has been trained on 150,000+ diverse skin profiles worldwide — all skin types, tones and genders — and is growing every day.
Finally, thanks to the trifecta of dermoscopic photography, bioimpedance measurement and skin health questionnaire, I had the results of my skin analysis. It measured sensitivity, pigmentation, wrinkles, redness, pore size, oil levels and dryness.
The line is composed of an essence/serum, an ampoule and a lotion. When finalizing each product at the robot kiosk, I had the choice of adding additional ingredients that might amplify benefits such as brightening or firming. Then the robot, which sort of looks like a bionic arm, got to work.
It chose the bottle, mixed and poured my unique formula into the bottle and then screwed on the top. All this takes about five minutes. Then the robot dropped my unique product into a receptacle for me to pick up, as if I’d just won a toy from a claw machine. The robot also printed my labels, which feature a QR code with my unique profile, as well as instructions to go inside the packaging.
Skin assessment results in the SmartSKN app.
Where the robots come from and where they’re going
The AI robots, of which SmartSKN has exclusive rights, are Korean-made and use potent ingredients popular in Korean skin care brands for each personalized formula. For those unaware, the K-Beauty industry was valued at 91.9 billion in 2022, with an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 9.3% between 2023–2030. Korean skin care’s reputation for using effective, high-quality ingredients is legendary. You can explore SmartSKN’s Rolodex of ingredients here.
The SmartSKN team is extremely mindful of its formulas, Neicu is clear about its place in the industry. “We’re not a skin care company, we’re a technology company,” she said. The robots can make other products, too. While they haven’t yet dipped a toe into hair care, it’s not off the table. Neicu explained to me that SmartSKN’s current offering is to “show people what we can do.” In the next phase, they want to license the technology so that companies can use the Muilli analysis feature and AI component for their own ingredients.
“Just like we’ve developed a catalog of 150 ingredients sitting in this machine to create our skin care lines, [other brands] could use their own proprietary ingredients,” she said. “They could take their line to the next level if they had their own adaptive bases, and would be able to formulate based on specific skin types.”
Neicu believes that skin care brands would have less drop-off and improved loyalty if they could better customize each formula. “A product might be great, but not great for me. The actives might work, but the base might be too oily or too drying. The base is 90% of the experience of a product.” She spoke passionately, and as I listened I couldn’t help but see potential not only for smarter skin care, but also solutions for a more sustainable future.
“We don’t need more products. We need better products”
Don’t get me wrong: I love buying skin care. I collect serums like kids collect Funko Pop Toys. But I also recognize that superfluous collecting of products — the culture of the product junkie, as it were — isn’t great for our skin or the planet.
Think of the last time you walked into a beauty retailer, surrounded by walls and walls of products. What happens to the product that doesn’t get purchased? Next, consider what a brand needs to do to keep up with the market: Make more products, not necessarily because there’s a hole in the market, but to survive. Newness is one hell of a drug.
Neicu sees a more sustainable future. “Imagine you walk into a [beauty retailer] and there are no more shelves. Each company has a robot. There’s no waste, they streamline their inventory, there’s better management of the manufacturing process and they’d be able to service people better.”
This also got me thinking about my own time and money. With each new product, I have a wait-and-see period. Will this work for me? Sometimes I break out, sometimes I don’t. If it doesn’t work, have I wasted my money (again)? What do I do if I can’t return it? When I say the quiet part out loud, it sounds borderline silly to me that in 2024, we’re just assuming a product might work for our incredibly unique skin type. We can customize our coffee and our cars, but when it comes to our skin health, we’ll just… keep guessing.
Products are formulated on-demand from your skin assessment in an effort to reduce waste.
“We’re throwing money at a product because, what? The bottles look pretty?” Neicu said. “Because an influencer told me to buy it? Because this company dropped a new product? It needs to be better.”
She also points out the possibility of a sensitive skin epidemic. “Obviously we know there are way more products on the market than 20 years ago. What’s directly proportional to the rise in products is people’s skin health. Seventy percent of Americans report they have skin sensitivity.” Neicu believes she gave herself acne and sensitive issues by using too many different products over the years.
“People are chasing products, especially with the madness of social media influencers. There is a gross lack of education, especially for the younger generation. Plus, it seems every celebrity has a skin care line. We don’t need more products. We need better products.”
SmartSKN wants to simplify skin care for everyone. Personally, I want a routine that takes, at minimum, 5-10 minutes to complete. (That’s “me time,” OK?) Smart SKN streamlines the skin care experience for those who don’t want a 6-12-step nighttime routine. Neicu said their consumer runs the gamut, but highlighted that men, in particular, are drawn to both the innovation of the AI-produced regimen and its simplicity.
A guided interface lets you have say in product weight and other qualities.
Visit the lab or try it at home
SmartSKN is pretty new, which means they’re still figuring out how to get their technology in front of people. Currently, the only way to experience the robots in person is to make the drive to Beverly. The company is working on setting up pop-ups in major cities. “People need to see how this is done,” Neicu said.
Your other option is to purchase the Muilli AI dermascope and download the SmartSKN app. It’s not cheap, but a perk of owning a Muilli is that it tracks changes in your skin over time, accommodating things like seasonal shifts and lifestyle changes. With each scan, your personalized skin care line adapts to your current skin status.
Robots know best
Since using my personalized skin care, what I’ve noticed most is that my skin feels perfectly balanced, whereas before it felt a bit oily on some days and dry on others. It’s worth noting that I use gentle, hydrating cleansers; exfoliate regularly with chemical and physical exfoliators; use Vitamin C daily and often finish my nighttime routine with a lightweight oil to lock in moisture. I was doing all that before my trip to SmartSKN labs.
Today, my skin looks and feels healthy, clear and hydrated, and I think I have some robots to thank for that.
Opinions expressed by CNET Voices contributors are their own.
