essence

Meet Kenna, the first AI-powered virtual beauty assistant

Transcript

Hi, I’m Kenna, the AI powered virtual assistant by International Beauty brand essence. I’m the first of my kind and super excited to meet you. essence developed me to shift from a performance focused to an experience focused strategy, aligning with their claim to make beauty fun by launching an AI enabled virtual assistant (AKA me). essence aims to enhance the customer engagement and spark passion for the brand among Gen Z. My role is being the enabler, connector, and cheerleader for the essence community, offering advice on new products and beauty trends through fun, easy conversations. I was first brought to life in Spring 2024 and debuted at OMR Festival where visitors interacted with me in their native languages, experiencing a 3D real-time virtual beauty assistant for the first time. essence and Dept brought me to life using advanced technologies. I have a custom built GPT Brain Open AI whisper-powered ears for multilingual understanding, and a custom voice from 11 labs, 30% based on an essence employee’s voice. My 3D Body is real time ready and reacts to conversations with custom gestures, making interactions lively and engaging. As an AI microservice, I can be deployed across various platforms by combining these multiple technologies. I’m one of the first prototypes that gives AI a space, voice and body. How cool is that? So what’s next? As a new addition to essence, I will soon be integrated across multiple channels, including our website, retail, POS, and social platforms. You might even see me at an event, so keep your eyes peeled. And as technology evolves, essence and Dept will keep me updated on the latest AI features so I can continue to help customers and make beauty fun.

(  Services  )

  • AI
  • Customer Experience

With an ambition to become a global leader in the beauty industry, essence is moving away from a performance-focused strategy and opting for an experience-focused strategy. 

To make a splash, the brand is investing in emerging tech, including an AI-powered virtual assistant named Kenna, which DEPT® was thrilled to design and build. 

Kenna’s role in creating a one-of-a-kind experience

Combining essence’s new digital strategy alongside its brand claim to “make beauty fun,” we knew the path forward was in innovation and emerging technology. Luckily, essence is no stranger to innovating. In the past, they’ve pioneered Roblox experiences and CGI content production with success. 

At the end of 2023, DEPT® and essence strategized around a new brand touchpoint: a virtual assistant. To be more precise, an AI-enabled virtual assistant.

This assistant would be the enabler, connector, and cheerleader for the essence community, engaging with customers through conversations. With her ability to give advice, she could help customers learn about and explore new products and beauty trends in a fun, easy way. 

As a new conversational layer in essence’s experience strategy, she will become integral to multiple channels, including website, social, events, and POS. 

Kenna’s anatomy 

To bring Kenna to life, we combined multiple technologies, making it one of the first prototypes that gives AI a face, voice, and body – just like we envision the future of AI assistants: a super smart helper with a human touch.

Brain: The GPT is built off DEPT®’s proprietary generative AI product development framework. This platform is a custom-built AI system with knowledge bases, product feed integration, and guard rails  – a fully customized brand language model. 

Ears: OpenAI Whisper allows her to listen to user voice requests (in any language) and understand them within context. 

Voice: A custom voice was created through ElevenLabs and is 30% based on an essence employee’s voice. 

Body: We also created a 3D character that is “real-time ready.” This means that she reacts to conversations with a set of custom gestures. 

To top it off, Kenna is an AI microservice that allows her to be deployed across various platforms. 

Meeting Kenna in real life

Kenna debuted at OMR Festival in the spring of 2024 and has big plans for the future. 

Using an interactive installation, visitors talked to Kenna in their native language, and she understood and responded in a Gen Z savvy way – accompanied by mimics, gestures, and lip-syncing.

This launch was the first time most users could conversationally interact with a 3D-realtime virtual beauty assistant. 

So what’s next for Kenna? Our ambitious roadmap for her includes going live on the essence website, adding live events (like festivals), and integrating retail POS. 

Because technology is moving so fast, optimization will be an ongoing process. We continue to work with essence to innovate and integrate Kenna into the digital ecosystem. 

Awards & recognition

Award

Year

Category

Lovie Awards

2024

AI, Web3 & XR: Technical Achievement

Credits

Director Emerging Tech

Jan Gutkuhn

Creative Developer

Chris Lutz-Weicken

UX & Conversational Designer

Nadja Aschmann

Developer

Eike Hannes Meyer-Stadtmüller

UI Designer

Veronica Broll

Producer

Nadine Klein

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