IlluminateAI, a Santa Cruz, Calif.-based start-up, looks to redefine how beauty brands approach product recommendations in the digital era. Its first client, E.l.f. Beauty, is already seeing the impact.

“What we’re doing now wasn’t possible even five years ago, and what I’m super excited about is this is only going to get better and more powerful in the future,” said IlluminateAI founder and chief executive officer Konrad Jarausch, a Ph.D. spectroscopist.

“As we developed this technology, we started talking to beauty executives, and it became clear that beauty was the first obvious opportunity to unlock the benefits of this technology,” he went on. “Beauty is very dependent on color measurement, particularly for complexion products.”

IlluminateAI’s mission is to transform how cameras see the world and make visual AI more useful in the real world. The technology solved a challenge in color measurement, enabling smartphones to accurately detect color and reflectivity in real time, regardless of inconsistent lighting.

“We reinvent the physics of photography, which allows cameras to accurately measure color for the very first time and deliver reliable data about what they see,” Jarausch explained.

“We actually change the way selfies work,” he continued. “Instead of taking a single picture or single selfie, we take a series of pictures where we synchronize the phone screen with the camera. Our selfies measure how the light from the phone screen reflects from your face. This allows us to measure your skin with a known source of light, the light from the screen. And this is what changes everything.”

IlluminateAI is the first company to make professional-grade pigmentation and undertone measurements accessible to consumers via a smartphone, which was previously only possible with expensive lab equipment, Jarausch claimed.

He and his team met with E.l.f. Beauty in 2023, and the beauty company is now the first to bring the technology to market.

E.l.f. Beauty has integrated IlluminateAI’s shade finder directly into its app, accessible through a QR code on its Skin Tint packaging. Shoppers can scan while browsing in-store or at home and instantly receive a personalized recommendation.

According to E.l.f. Beauty, users who engaged with the shade finder have more than a three times higher conversion rate compared to all site traffic. The brand also reported strong engagement numbers: more than half who use the shade finder add to their digital shopping bag, and app downloads increased by more than 30 percent in the first month following the launch in June.

“Matching people to products is the unsolved problem in beauty e-commerce,” E.l.f. Beauty’s chief digital officer Ekta Chopra, told WWD in an exclusive statement. “Asking consumers to go to stores to try on samples is so last century. We’ve spent years seeking a digital solution that actually works. IlluminateAI is the first company we’ve seen that is doing something really unique. Their breakthrough physics enables the measurement of all skin tones, so we decided to work with them to develop a visual AI product which delivers the luxury of personalization to every single member of our valued E.l.f. community.” 

Clarins has also tapped IlluminateAI to power its customer experience.

“Beauty has some of the most challenging e-commerce metrics of any industry,” Jarausch added. “You look at customer satisfaction, you look at conversion rates and returns. They need to be better.”