Ulta Beauty Inc. is expanding its digital toolkit with a new generative AI-powered hair try-on tool, designed to make online beauty shopping more interactive and personalized.

The GLAMlab Hair Try-On is now live on Ulta’s website and mobile app. It lets shoppers experiment with different hair colors and styles virtually before deciding to buy.

Using Nvidia’s advanced AI technology, the feature allows users to upload a photo, take a quick selfie, or use a model’s image to see how different hair transformations might look. Ulta reports strong early engagement, with thousands of users trying out the tool daily. The company hasn’t shared exact conversion numbers. However, it notes that customers who use the virtual try-on tool are more likely to purchase a product than those who don’t.

Ulta Beauty ranks No. 91 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of North America’s leading online retailers by annual web sales.

Ulta’s digital innovation strategy

Ulta Beauty has been blending technology with beauty retail for years, with its virtual and augmented reality tools setting benchmarks for omnichannel shopping experiences. GLAMlab first launched in 2016 with virtual makeup try-on capabilities, offering an alternative to physical testers in stores.

The new GLAMlab Hair Try-On builds on this foundation, powered by Nvidia’s StyleGAN2 technology — a neural network architecture known for generating hyper-realistic images.

“Shoppers need to try out hair and makeup styles before they purchase,” said Juan Cardelino, Ulta Beauty’s director of the computer vision and digital innovation department, in a blog post about the new tool. “As one of the first cosmetics companies to integrate makeup testers in stores, offering try-ons is part of Ulta Beauty’s DNA — whether in physical or digital retail environments.”

For the new application, Ulta licensed the model for commercial use, retrained it, and implemented guardrails to make sure the AI modifies only hair-related pixels, leaving facial features untouched, according to Cardelino.

“StyleGAN2 is one of the most well-regarded models in the tech community, and, since the source code was available for experimentation, it was the right choice for our application,” Cardelino said.

Ulta generative AI hair try-on tool

Notably, the tool relies on Nvidia Tensor Core GPUs in the cloud to process each hair transformation using AI inference. In simpler terms, inference is how the AI takes the information from a user’s uploaded photo and quickly applies the selected hair color or style to create a realistic preview.

The first transformation takes about five seconds to generate, while subsequent styles load almost instantly, in about one second each. Once users find a color they like, they can find links to Ulta Beauty products to achieve the look in real life.

Ulta isn’t stopping there. The company said it plans to expand GLAMlab’s capabilities into categories like wigs and explore how the hairstyle try-ons could be linked to in-store styling services.

“Stylists could use the tool to show our guests how certain hairstyles will look on them, giving them more confidence to try new looks,” Cardelino said.

Strong digital performance drives growth

Ulta Beauty’s ongoing investment in digital tools appears to be paying off. During the retailer’s latest earnings call, CEO Dave Kimbell highlighted Ulta’s focus on enhancing its digital experiences to drive discovery, traffic, and sales.

For its fiscal third quarter ended Nov. 2, Ulta reported net sales of $2.53 billion. That’s a 1.7% increase from $2.49 billion in the same period last year. Comparable sales, which include ecommerce, grew 0.6%. Customer transactions across its website and stores rose 0.5%. The average spend per visit increased by 0.1% year over year.

Ulta also saw double-digit growth in member engagement with its mobile app. Its mobile app also accounted for about two-thirds of its ecommerce sales in Q3. That’s a 600 basis point increase from the previous year, Kimbell said.

The quarter also marked the launch of GLAMlab 2.0. Kimbell said it introduced improvements such as a new 3D engine for:

• Enhanced precision
• Shoppable makeup looks
• A refreshed user interface with sharing capabilities

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