OpenAI just opened up for agentic commerce meaning users can now search, discover and purchase all directly from within chatGPT via instant checkout. This is going to disrupt current skincare e-commerce which haven’t evolved much over the last decade. You still get met with a virtual shelf of categories, best sellers and promotional claims. And they all look more or less the same. Sure some sites have implemented quizzes or facial scanning tools to aid in the selection between different products, powered by the likes of Haut.ai, perfectcorp, and others. Personalized skincare was even the premise for building Revea from the ground up. But all of that is now obsolete.
ChatGPT is a multimodal model, meaning you can start your search with an image of your face and the following prompt:
“You are a skin expert. You are to diagnose the attached image in terms of cosmetic skin needs. Specifically
- Skin hydration in terms of dryness lines, flaky skin, and potential skin barrier caused redness
- Tone in terms of uneven pigmentation, blotchy skin color and potential melanin caused under eye circles
- Texture in terms of skin roughness, pores and minor irregularities
- Vitality in terms of skin radiance, pallid or fatigued look
- Redness / inflammation in terms of redness, breakouts or sensitive reactions
- Firmness in terms of expression lines, wrinkles, sagging and bitterness lines
If you are in doubt follow up with target questions. The subject is a Caucasian male of age 46″
And then attach an image of your face in good natural lighting without makeup, glasses etc.
This will give you a complete breakdown (but generic) breakdown of your needs that you can start to refine from. In my case:
“Summary of Main Cosmetic Needs
- Hydration & Barrier Support → Hyaluronic acid + ceramides + niacinamide.
- Even Tone & Redness Reduction → Vitamin C + soothing agents.
- Texture Refinement → Gentle exfoliation (PHA/retinol).
- Vitality Boost → Brightening & energizing actives.
- Firmness Maintenance → Retinol + peptides.
- Everyday Protection → Broad spectrum SPF daily.
Would you like me to map this into a minimal routine (3 steps AM/PM) or a full targeted regimen (hydration, anti-aging, tone, redness all addressed)?”
Now you can start to refine this to explore further favorite ingredients like copper peptides, here is the outcome:
Would you like me to compare copper peptides vs retinol for your skin (since both target firmness/lines, but with different strengths and tolerances)
OpenAI just created the expert skincare personal shopper for everyone, and that is bad news for the like of Sephora, ULTA and similar large e-commerce sites. They no longer own the customer journey, they can no longer control the narrative, they are limited in getting information about their consumers to increase LTV.
While chatGPT is generic in its answers, and will not be state of the art in understanding skin needs to ingredient mapping, it has something that brands don’t. Trust. The mere fact that you can compare across brands, and that chatGPT is agnostic to what you end up purchasing builds credibility, that users also rely on chatGPT for all kinds of other question and guidance only boost trust and confidence. And let us not forget, they already have reach and distribution. Skincare is in for yet another uphill battle.