CJ Olive Young rolls out AI kiosks to help foreign shoppers navigate stores

The CJ Olive Young's new artificial intelligence-powered kiosk "AI Shopping Assistant" / Courtesy of CJ Olive Young

CJ Olive Young, Korea's largest health and beauty retail chain, said Wednesday it is introducing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered services in its stores to make shopping easier for international customers, as demand for K-beauty products continues to grow.

The company is first rolling out its "AI Shopping Assistant" at multi-story flagship stores with high foreign customer traffic and strong demand for product information.

Through a kiosk, customers can hold a real-time conversation in eight different languages through an AI avatar, avoiding the need for staff assistance. The kiosk provides product descriptions, inventory checks, in-store navigation and personalized recommendations based on skin type and preferences.

The company said the kiosks are also meant to improve store efficiency by letting staff focus on specialized consultations, since simple or frequently asked questions about things like payment methods or value-added tax refunds can be answered on the touch screen.

The kiosks also provide store managers with a dashboard showing information like how long customers spend looking for information and most common questions, which the company said can help tailor store operations to customer needs.

While the AI assistant supports self-service shopping, a separate "AI Interpretation Service" assists in one-on-one conversations between staff and customers.

The service builds on a handheld translator device the company introduced in 2024. The device has been updated to use AI and has expanded to offer translation in 38 languages. Customers can either scan a QR code to join a real-time translated conversation with staff or speak through a microphone on an in-store tablet.

The system is trained on K-beauty-specific vocabulary so staff can give detailed guidance on ingredients and usage even when a customer describes a concern in their native language.

A company official said Olive Young plans to keep expanding its AI-based services nationwide.

This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.