Podcast 184: I asked ChatGPT to articulate for me

In last week’s guest episode, Lorraine heard how artificial intelligence was impacting the beauty industry and what can be expected from this powerful technology in the future. Artificial intelligence, for example, is being leveraged by the industry to help increase productivity, reduce costs, automate tasks and improve decision-making.

Taking a cue from her interviewer, Lorraine decided to take on the challenge of seeing how well a commonly used artificial intelligence tool – technical darling ChatGPT – is capable of wording. Could it help, for example, in the formulation of a compact vitamin C facial serum bar?

In this opinion piece, Lorraine walks us through her experiment with ChatGPT, which went through several stages before ending with a surprising conclusion. Listen in to find out if AI is able to successfully formulate skincare despite missing that key ingredient – ​​“humanity” – that formulators everywhere, especially Formula Botanica and the indie beauty community, are bringing to equation.

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ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that uses natural language processing to generate conversational dialogue. Can answer questions and compose a variety of written content, including articles, social media posts, essays, and emails. You can ask it to receive images, text or videos generated by its AI technology.

At Formula Botanica, students are first taught a standardized approach to the formulation of skin care ingredients and ensure that the product is safe, stable and pleasant to use. So, in theory, AI should be able to help with a task like this.

Lorraine asked ChatGPT to help her create a product brief for her compact facial serum bar, emphasizing certain parameters such as the need for the bar to appeal to the green shopper, be long-lasting, divinely scented and neutral color and exude a luxurious experience.

While this initial step went fairly well, Lorraine noticed that as her prompts became more specific about which ingredients to use and in what amounts, ingredient stability and IFRA skin limits, ChatGPT became more complicated.

What started as a fun experiment turned into a feud: Chatbot vs. certified environmentalist and CEO. It went back and forth until Lorraine finally called it a day with the experiment. But listen to this short episode as you might be surprised by ChatGPT’s final answer.

Lorraine’s challenge for you this week is to play around with ChatGPT to discover how fun and useful it can be in helping with a range of tasks. But, remember that while AI is a miraculous, wonderful tool, it won’t replace the potion community anytime soon, since it’s missing one critical ingredient: humanity. Formulation is a skill that involves not only understanding the technicalities and legalities of a cosmetic formulation, but also requires the ability to experiment, touch, feel and smell. AI is missing some key elements, so remind yourself of that every time you’re creatively shaping your products.

Note: This blog was written by a real person!

Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please share, subscribe and review this episode at iTunes, Spotify the Youtube so that more people can enjoy the show. Don’t forget to follow and connect with us at Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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Lorraine Dallmeier is a biologist, certified environmentalist, and CEO of Formula Botanica, the award-winning online organic cosmetics school. Read more about Lorraine and the Formula Botanica team.