AI Makeup Guidance, Virtual Try-On and New Home Beauty Devices

A new device can add more features. A useful AI tool can remove one difficult decision. This week, I want to look at both — and ask what actually helps the customer.

I’m Mike, and this is Beauty Tech Weekly. We have new home devices from Therabody, AI makeup guidance from Arbelle, a practical update to virtual glasses try-on, and a new hair-care device from Rajani MD. Four stories, and what I think they mean for beauty businesses.

Therabody is opening this week with two new devices, announced on October twentieth: ThermFace Massage, for the face and jaw, and ThermNeck and Upper Back. Both are positioned around targeted home use. That makes this a useful beauty-and-wellness story, even though the launch is about more than skincare.

According to Therabody, ThermFace combines percussion and heat, while the wearable neck device combines several approaches, including massage, heat and light. Those are product descriptions from the company. I have not tested these devices, so this is a look at the launch and its implications, not a review.

What interests me is the increasingly specific question behind the product. A customer is not necessarily shopping for an impressive piece of technology. They might be asking what fits into a short evening routine, or what they can realistically keep using between professional appointments.

For a salon, I would use that question to improve the conversation around home care. Which parts of the experience can a client manage independently? Where do they still need professional judgement? And are we explaining that distinction clearly enough before they leave the appointment?

I would not respond by saying that a gadget replaces a professional service. I would also avoid dismissing it simply because it is designed for home use. Both reactions skip the useful work: understanding the client’s goal and being precise about what each option is intended to do.

A practical starting point is a short, service-specific home-care guide. Explain the routine, the boundaries of the advice, and when the client should speak to a qualified professional. Keep device claims tied to their sources. Do not turn a manufacturer’s product description into your own promise of results.

My takeaway is that more equipment in the home makes the quality of explanation worth paying attention to. The opportunity for a beauty business is to make its expertise easier to understand. And that brings us to a different kind of guidance: software that helps people choose what to buy.

Arbelle’s October twenty-second announcement puts Look Finder in the spotlight. It is a recommendation tool for cosmetics brands: facial analysis and a brand’s own catalogue are used to suggest coordinated makeup products. The useful distinction is that it starts with a look, rather than leaving the shopper to assemble every item alone.

On its product page, Arbelle describes a journey from a face scan to recommendations, then to trying supported products virtually and buying them. The company also says brands can shape the product selection. These are the advertised capabilities; we have not independently measured the effect on sales.

I see a useful shift in the question being answered. A conventional catalogue says, here are the products. A guided experience tries to answer, which of these belong together for me? For the customer, that could make the next step clearer. For the business, the quality of that guidance becomes something to evaluate.

The commercial incentives still matter. If a brand chooses which products the system can recommend, the answer is drawn from that selection. I would want the experience to make that clear. A helpful recommendation should not quietly pretend to be a comparison of every product on the market.

This is close to the way I think about AI Beauty Bot. Our service can already communicate with your clients. What I find useful in this example is the different angle: helping someone choose a coordinated look. I am not suggesting that our product has this same visual recommendation feature.

For a salon or beauty brand, I would start with the questions customers repeatedly ask before they decide. Which questions need a clear factual answer? Which require a specialist? Which could benefit from a visual example? That gives you a better brief for an AI tool than asking for a chatbot simply because everyone else has one.

Then measure whether people actually get the help they came for. Look at completed decisions, unresolved questions and the quality of handover to a person. A more elaborate interface is not automatically a better experience. My test would be simple: did we make the choice clearer, without overstating what the system knows?

Perfect Corp.’s October twentieth release describes a generative AI update to virtual eyewear try-on. There is an important timing detail: the company had already described Glasses Removal in September. So the news this week is the company’s announcement about the update, not the first-ever appearance of the idea.

The problem is immediately understandable. If you need prescription glasses to see your screen, taking them off for a virtual try-on is awkward. Keep them on, and a second virtual frame may appear over the pair you are already wearing. The interface can get in the way of the very person it is supposed to help.

Perfect’s demonstration shows the original glasses being removed from the image, followed by different virtual frames. The company says generative AI reconstructs the area hidden by the original pair. This is the brand’s demonstration, not our own test of how reliably it works across different faces and lighting conditions.

That distinction is worth keeping. A convincing visual demonstration tells us what the product is trying to do. It does not, on its own, tell us how well it performs for every customer. I would still want to try difficult cases, including reflections, unusual frames and less-than-perfect lighting.

But as a product-design idea, I like the specificity. This is not an abstract promise to transform shopping. It addresses a small obstacle that can interrupt an ordinary task. You do not need to run an eyewear business to recognise the value of looking for those obstacles in your own customer journey.

For a beauty business, I would watch someone use the booking or product-selection experience without explaining it to them. Where do they hesitate? What do they misunderstand? What information do they have to go and find somewhere else? Write down the actual moments of friction before choosing the technology to address them.

The broader lesson is that useful AI can be almost invisible. If it lets the customer continue naturally, it has done something valuable. I would judge this kind of feature by successful task completion and fewer confusing moments, rather than by how prominently the letters A and I appear on the screen.

Our final story is another home device, but with a different question attached. On October twenty-second, Rajani MD announced the PlasmaGLO Hair Plus Cap, a cordless device combining laser and LED technology for at-home hair care. The announcement gives us a product to examine, not a result we can promise.

The company describes a rechargeable format with automated twelve-minute sessions. It also promotes the number and types of light sources. Those details help describe the hardware. They do not, by themselves, establish how well this particular device will work for a particular person.

That is the part of the story I want beauty professionals to take seriously. A specification can sound precise and still leave the most important question unanswered. More lights, more modes or a more expensive design are not substitutes for evidence about the outcome being discussed.

When a client brings in a device announcement, I would separate three conversations. First, what is the product designed to do? Second, what evidence is available for that exact product and use? Third, is this something the client should discuss with an appropriately qualified clinician rather than treating it as a routine beauty purchase?

That does not mean being dismissive of every new launch. It means being able to explain what is known, what is being claimed, and what has not been established in the material you have seen. I would rather give a client a precise, limited answer than a confident recommendation built on a press release.

For this episode, we are reporting the announcement. We are not presenting an independent clinical assessment, recommending a treatment schedule, or promising hair regrowth. The useful business lesson is how to handle that distinction when a client asks about a new device after seeing it online.

My practical suggestion is to keep a simple evidence note for any device you discuss professionally: the exact model, the source of the claim, and the questions still open. That makes it easier to update your advice when better information appears, instead of repeating the most memorable line from the launch campaign.

Across these stories, my question is the same: are we helping people understand their options, or simply giving them more things to process? Pick one point of confusion in your own customer journey this week and work on that. You have been watching Beauty Tech Weekly. The sources and further reading are in the episode notes. I’m Mike. See you next week.