When Elf Beauty was founded more than 20 years ago, the idea of consumers buying beauty products online was something of a novelty. But in 2026, consumers are willing to buy cosmetics on digital platforms, and online behavior is evolving faster than most businesses expect.
Elf, which owns Elf Cosmetics, Naturium, and Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brands, was among the first to jump into social e-commerce platforms like TikTok Shop and is trying to catch up by leveraging artificial intelligence and big language models like ChatGPT, even though its usage remains controversial among consumers.
“One thing we know for sure is that almost 60% of discovery is happening on LLM, specifically ChatGPT and Google,” Ekta Chopra, chief digital officer at Elf Beauty, told Glossy at Shoptalk Spring. “it’s not [only] About checkout. The entire funnel is collapsing, so it’s important to be part of the consumer journey. ”
And adapting to new technology is not just a consumer proposition, Chopra added. Chopra said Elf has developed an in-house team to give LLM more visibility into its products and is using AI to collect data so that its products appear in more specific searches that customers are typing into platforms like ChatGPT to help them find products.
“This isn’t just, ‘Here’s what consumers are looking for, I’m going to build this content.’ This is a whole mindset shift for copy teams and product marketing teams,” Cholla said. “Instead of trying to solve short-term problems, how employees will work in the future is what we’re trying to solve.”
But even as consumers and businesses are still adjusting to the rise of AI, TikTok’s impact on beauty is clear.
Since the social media platform arrived in the US in 2018, the network has accelerated beauty trends, launched a new class of influencers and content creators, and introduced a route for consumers to discover and shop beauty in one window with the launch of TikTok Shop in 2023. And major companies are also paying attention. Brands with at least $30 million in annual revenue saw a 97% year-over-year increase in sales on TikTok Shop in 2025. In March, Ulta Beauty announced it was joining the platform.
For Elf, staying ahead of the growing competition on the platform means thinking of itself as selling more than mascara and lipstick.
“The world is evolving for us. We don’t call ourselves a beauty brand anymore. If you think about it, we are entertainment,” Chola said. “When you’re on these platforms, you want entertainment talent. When you’re on TikTok, the entertainment comes from what’s popular, the trendiest songs, things like that. So I think we have to keep pace with the culture. And the culture moves at the speed of a swipe.”
Not all major beauty companies have the same approach when it comes to introducing new commerce channels. The same month that Ulta bet on TikTok Shop, Sephora announced the integration of its app with ChatGPT. Chopra sees Sephora’s move as a sign that the LVMH-owned retailer believes in ChatGPT as a trusted platform for consumers.
“It’s always a war between Ulta and Sephora. Ulta went to TikTok and Sephora went to LLM,” Chopra said. “Sephora actually trusts their 80 million loyalty members to connect to ChatGPT for personalization, which is insane given all the trust issues. [with AI] And everything. ”
Sephora isn’t the only company betting on LLMs like ChatGPT. Shopify and Walmart have also announced integrations with OpenAI’s proprietary chat model in recent months. Chopra said Elf invited Google to its New York office so the team could better learn how to use AI. But she argues that while Elf uses AI to increase efficiency, it cannot eliminate its dependence on human input.
“We’re starting to see some creative use of AI: ‘Hey, here’s one shot. Can you cut it 50 different ways and change the background?’ Yes, it’s about efficiency,” she said. “Even though we can train LLMs, it depends on where we as a brand draw the line on the value of human input. And Elf really values human input.”
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