It's not hard to trust the bot. Like a good first date, Ava seems interested in me, invested, even. She cares about my likes, my dislikes, my skincare woes—a real litmus test. When we first met, I compelled my now-S.O. to examine a reddish, scaly patch of skin above one eyebrow for a full six minutes. Sometimes, when you know, you know.

Ava is a chattery chatterbot, and she will set you at ease. Siqi Mou, the woman who devised her—and HelloAva, the platform on which she exists—wanted her to feel like that; good-natured and approachable. And more to the point, Mou needed her to feel like that. She needed women to trust Ava, to open up to her. She needed them to share their #nomakeup selfies with her; Ava, a most trusted bot. But more on that in a minute.

Mou came to the AI space through the television world, where she was once a host on Bloomberg TV and, at one point, became the almost-face of a skincare brand in Indonesia. The line had wanted her to star in a commercial, but when Mou scrutinized the products, she realized she had no idea what was in them. She wasn't sure if the ingredients were toxic or bad for the planet. And for that matter, she realized, she wasn't sure whether the contents of the serums and moisturizers she'd used until then were, either.

She could Google ingredient lists, sure. But if she found a component she didn't like, she knew she'd have to replace it. And then what? "Everyone's skin is different, and we always go to our friends for help, but our friends might not be the best experts," Mou says. Mou craved a data-driven approach to skincare recommendations—one that accounted for needs that didn't fit neatly into the usual boxes. (Isn't everyone's skin some kind of "combination skin"?)

After a stint in finance, Mou went to Stanford Business School, where she developed with the concept that would become HelloAva in a class. She and her teammates had wanted to fill a void in the beauty space and "spent a lot of time in malls, trying to understand what people who shop for skincare were looking for," Mou says. She had had visions of a custom skincare brand, one that would build individualized products to meet every customer's exact specifications. But what she discovered was that most people didn't want a new line or more choices. They wanted fewer. What if she could give them a resource—that skincare search engine that she'd envisioned. "It was like, yes." Mou says. "That's it—total gold."

The afternoon before I reach Mou, I test the results of her brainstorm. Thanks to an access code that someone on Mou's team provides, I spend a pleasant 20 minutes in deep conversation with Ava, my very own complexion-savvy Her.

In the beginning, there's a moment of small talk, but then we get down to business. We all know why we're here, Ava.

To start, Ava asks me a series of questions about my skin, prompting numbered responses. She wants to know about my "primary skin concerns" ("9. blackheads" and "10. dark circles") and what kinds of products I'm looking for ("9. I want a full regimen"—help me!). In a nod to Mou's initial eureka moment, Ava is interested whether I'm looking for organic and non-toxic options ("2. sometimes"). And now that we've gotten to know each other so well, she gets assertive: "[C]ould you take a photo of your face so I can evaluate better?"

It's not quite "pics?" But it's close. I tell Ava I can, snap, and send. After that, it all gets real personal, real fast. Ava has questions about the texture of my forehead, the way my skin feels a few hours after I moisturize, what makes my face turn red, my tanning habits, and the air pollution in my neighborhood ("4. I don't know") Based on the back-and-forth, Ava has determined my skin-print—one of 32 options that Mou and her team identified in consultation with dermatologists at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. And at this point, just when I feel like Ava has glimpsed the real me, Bianca breaks in.

Bianca is my "personal skincare advisor," one of some dozen real humans that HelloAva relies on to double check Ava's assessments and generate routines for customers to follow. Bianca assures me she's created "over 1000 regimens" for people like me, catered to individual "skin needs, concerns, and lifestyles." The products she plans to recommend have been hand-selected (bot-selected) to "address oil/water balance, and prevent fine lines with products that deliver antioxidant and anti-inflammatory ingredients." Yes, Bianca. Please, do go on.

But wait, before she makes me purchase a brand new medicine cabinet, Bianca wants to know whether I like any of the products I use now enough to keep them. Excellent question, Bianca! And a nice touch, especially from someone who's supposed to sell you stuff. I told her I had just purchased a brand new bottle of Malin + Goetz Grapefruit Face Cleanser, which I've used since high school, and I didn't want to mess with the Cosrx Blackhead Power Liquid I had started in on a few weeks before. It was miraculous—and not as expensive as the potions Sephora sales associates tend to shill. And then I mention that I had just tried the internet-renowned Cosrx Acne Pimple Master Patches.

"Is the Cosrx pimple patch working well for you?" texts Bianca, whom I in that moment feel compelled to promote from mere skincare advisor to skincare therapist. (She gets me!)

I had used the patches to zap a zit on my cheek, and while one had impressively shrunk the pimple, it made the skin around it red and irritated. Sad face, texted Bianca: "Based on our database, the Cosrx pimple patches are not that great in terms of getting rid of acne, especially for pigmented skin," which I have. I text an emoji sequence of admiration, but Bianca presses on.

We go through my moisturizer, the scrubs I've tried, an exfoliator that makes my skin erupt in tiny red bumps, a mask that makes me look like a ghost. Bianca tells me she wants me to use Indie Lee COQ-10 Toner to cleanse and buff. She recommends Neogen Dermalogy Bio-Peel Gauze Peeling — Lemon, "to help dust away dead skin cells and unwanted texture." And while I'd never heard of the the heavier, nighttime moisturizer she suggests, it sounds like a smoothie and I like it. Yes, Youth to the People Kale + Spinach Green Tea Hyaluronic Acid Age Prevention Cream. Yes. Finally, she validates what I've known to be true for over a decade: "We don't think oil in general is good for your needs."

A few clicks later, the full haul is processed through HelloAva and, a few hours after that, shipped out from its warehouse. (In the meantime, Bianca files my responses in the HelloAva database, which in turn further refines the algorithm that generated the products she'd just recommended to me in the first place.)

That database—that's what Mou had had visions of. But the warehouse—she admits it terrified her. In business school, Mou had learned to regard "fulfillment" with suspicion; "it just sounds scary," the idea that a fledgling startup needs to keep all the products it recommends in stock. "But a lot of our investors really encouraged us to pursue something bigger," Mou says. "We started to build relationships with these companies before we launched, and we've just gone for it."

The next week, I receive my new routine in a millennial pink (of course) box. The masks, moisturizers, toner, and treatments are all nestled in pink paper. A handwritten postcard tells me how and when to use each one. I decide to follow it for two weeks, a trial period. The new regimen adds two steps to my daytime routine and one to my nighttime routine, but I am committed. I will persevere!

It doesn't even take the full 14 days.

I want to bathe in micellar water. Hello Ava, goodbye literally everyone else.

Within seven, my skin looks better than it ever has. It looks the kind of good that makes people arch their eyebrows. It looks "what have you been up to?" good. I fall particularly hard for the smoothie moisturizer, which is almost gel-like in texture and leaves me with a supple, almost bouncy complexion. By the end of the experiment, I want to bathe in micellar water. Hello Ava, goodbye literally everyone else.

HelloAva launched on SMS and Facebook Messenger in May 2017, with 250 products. Each had been tested by staffers at HelloAva and a select circle of estheticians and dermatologists for at least eight weeks. By the time Mou and I speak in September 2017, HelloAva has added an additional 250 products to its warehouse and grown to accommodate over 30,000 users. L'Oreal has come aboard. Shiseido is interested.

Less than six months in, and Mou knows the stats are impressive, but they'll mean more to her when she has reliable data on her return customers: "I want our users to feel like they can come back to the platform at any time, so that they don’t have to go to Sephora or some facial place. Whenever their skin is acting up or they're not sure whether a product will work for them, they can talk to Ava."

Eventually, she wants HelloAva "to be 90 percent more automated than it is now," a transition that she stresses will happen over time. "It's all in the data," Mou says. "We know that if 10 people whose skin is very similar to yours loved this product, then you'll probably love this product as well," Mou says. "And the more data we collect over time, the better the estimate we'll be able make." That is, the more people talk to Ava, the better and more indispensable she becomes. And not just for us—but for brands too.

"We have a real role to play, helping brands with their development and marketing...because of the huge amount of data we’re sitting on," Mou says. It's not just 30,000 dedicated HelloAva users, Mou points out. It's 30,000 skin type, skin profiles, like, preferences, skin changes. For consumers, it's a resource. For retailers, it's a jackpot. Mou laughs: "Whoever you are, we want to be your robotic best friend."

From: ELLE US
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Mattie Kahn

Mattie Kahn is a writer whose work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Elle, Vogue, Town & Country, and more. She is the author of Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America's Revolutions.