When ChatGPT decides what beauty products you buy: a new variable in the Global South consumer market

When ChatGPT Decides What Beauty Products You Buy: A New Variable in the Global South Consumer Market

A consumer traveling in New York suddenly developed a skin problem. Instead of consulting a dermatologist, she opened ChatGPT. After entering her skin type, climate, and current products, she received a complete skincare routine, including specific reasons for switching products. This case, which appeared on TikTok, is just one snapshot of AI reshaping beauty consumption decisions.

A recent report by The Business of Fashion notes that a growing number of consumers are using large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot to get beauty product recommendations. Brands are consequently accelerating investment in generative engine optimization (GEO), trying to win exposure across a bewildering variety of prompts. However, the significance of this phenomenon goes far beyond e-commerce and marketing—it is rewriting consumption rules in the Global South, reshaping the competitive landscape for brands, and even altering the logic of international capital flows.

From Keywords to Prompts: "Leapfrog" Consumption in Emerging Markets

In the traditional search era, brands competed for consumers through keyword optimization. A typical user might type "best vitamin C serum," and brands would build their strategies around that phrase. But in the AI era, search has evolved into "prompts"—users describe their skin type, climate, ingredient preferences, and even packaging requirements in detail. This shift is especially critical for emerging markets.

Many countries in the Global South have large young populations and rapidly rising mobile internet penetration, yet offline beauty retail channels are often underdeveloped. In sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia, consumers have long relied on social media and word-of-mouth for decisions. AI recommendation systems filter and compress the massive amount of information in these regions into answers delivered in seconds, lowering the barrier to professional beauty knowledge. For young consumers in Cairo, Jakarta, or Lagos, AI is likely to become a more reliable advisor than in-store sales staff.

This is essentially leapfrog development: just as many emerging markets skipped landlines and went straight to mobile, they may also skip traditional search advertising and move directly to AI-native consumption. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein revealed on the company's February 2026 earnings call that AI-driven search had grown 15-fold. This explosive growth may be even more pronounced in regions with relatively weak internet infrastructure but extremely high mobile device penetration.

Content Authority: The Hidden Moat of International Brands in AI RecommendationsAccording to data from Quilt.AI based on 12,000 related searches, the best-performing skincare brands in AI recommendations are mostly dermatological brands: Paula's Choice, CeraVe, and La Roche-Posay. These brands not only have rich product education content but also frequently appear in clinical research and reports from authoritative media. In the beauty category, brands under large conglomerates occupy most of the top ten, with only two independent brands—Rare Beauty and Anastasia Beverly Hills—making the list.

This finding carries profound implications for Global South markets. International brands have long invested in content creation and medical endorsements, giving them a natural advantage when AI scrapes information. When a Brazilian consumer asks for "a refreshing moisturizer suitable for tropical humid climates," AI may prioritize official web pages from L'Oréal or CeraVe over social media posts from local brands. This amounts to an invisible barrier built by Western giants in the AI recommendation system.

By contrast, local brands in emerging markets often have a better understanding of local needs but lack authoritative content and multi-channel endorsements. However, this is not a dead end. Market intelligence firms such as Profound provide "clickstream" data, allowing brands to analyze popular prompts on AI platforms and create targeted localized content. For example, an Indonesian brand could focus on long-tail prompts such as "natural ingredients suitable for high-humidity environments" to establish AI visibility in a niche segment.

The Evolution of Capital Flows and the Global Competitive Landscape

AI recommendations are transforming the "attention economy" of the beauty industry, and attention ultimately translates into capital flows. Brands are no longer focused solely on search rankings; instead, they pursue "answer presence"—as Tara Loftis, Global President of Byoma, puts it: "Traffic is no longer the only currency." This is driving brands to shift budgets from traditional SEO to GEO content production and authoritative media PR.

For Global South markets, this change will produce at least two effects. First, international capital may become more inclined to invest in brands that already occupy advantageous positions in the AI ecosystem, because their growth becomes more predictable. Second, local brands in emerging markets that wish to attract foreign investment may need to build their own "AI visibility"—for example, by collaborating with local dermatologists to publish research and establishing content connections with regional authoritative institutions.

On the other hand, the commercialization of AI platforms themselves is accelerating. In February 2026, ChatGPT launched a pilot advertising program, with major retailer Target among the first participants. Ads are triggered by specific keywords and are clearly distinguished from standard answers. This means that in the future, brands can obtain AI recommendation slots by paying. For emerging-market brands with limited budgets, this may constitute new pressure; for multinational companies preparing to enter these markets, however, it provides a tool to precisely reach high-intent users.## Policy Risks and Digital Sovereignty

The global spread of AI beauty recommendations also faces policy and regulatory challenges. First is the issue of data privacy. Consumers input sensitive information such as their personal skin type and health habits into AI. How should this data be protected when it flows across borders? The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the increasingly strict data localization policies in Global South countries may affect the way AI beauty brands deploy their services.

Second is the issue of content accuracy. In Aysha Harun's case, ChatGPT incorrectly claimed that Summer Fridays' mist did not contain ceramides. If AI recommendations contain systematic errors or biases, they may mislead consumers in emerging markets, especially those users who lack offline verification channels. Brands and regulators both need to establish error-correction mechanisms, and AI platforms must also be more transparent in labeling information sources.

In addition, the imbalance in digital infrastructure is also a long-term risk. Although mobile networks in the Global South are developing rapidly, a large number of people still cannot access high-speed internet stably. If AI recommendations become the mainstream gateway for beauty consumption, the digital divide may exacerbate market inequality. Some countries may use policies to require localized deployment of AI services, which will further affect the regional strategies of international brands.

Long-Term Trends: Global Growth Centers and AI Discourse Power

From a broader perspective, AI beauty recommendations are just a microcosm of the structural shift in the global consumer market. Institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have repeatedly emphasized that the center of global economic growth is shifting from advanced economies to emerging markets. The young populations of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East will continue to drive consumption growth over the next decade. And AI tools are becoming an important gateway between these consumers and global brands.

Whoever can master the discourse power of AI recommendations will gain a competitive advantage in the next stage. Currently, this discourse power still risks being dominated by Western technology platforms and large beauty groups. However, historical experience shows that emerging markets can often reshape global industries through unique conditions. For example, Southeast Asia's digital economy gave birth to super apps, and Africa's mobile payments leapfrogged the era of bank cards. In the beauty sector, Global South brands have the opportunity to use local knowledge, climate adaptability, and diverse aesthetic values to provide richer training materials for AI. But this requires proactive investment in content construction, data compliance, and algorithm fairness.

Conclusion

When ChatGPT begins to tell people "which beauty cream to buy," this seems like just an everyday intersection of technology and consumption. But from the perspective of the Global South, it is a deep transformation concerning information, capital, and the discourse power of growth. International brands and local enterprises in emerging markets, technology platforms and regulators, global capital and local entrepreneurs—all need to rethink: in an era when AI becomes the chief beauty advisor, who will define "good products"? Who will be recommended? And who will remain invisible? These answers will outline the contours of the global beauty industry and the broader consumer market over the next decade.(This article is a re-analysis based on reporting by The Business of Fashion, combined with emerging market structure research, and does not constitute any investment advice.)