ChatGPT and other AI chatbots are being used for just about everything lately. While I acknowledge the benefits of assistive AI in a new world, it’s frequently wrong, sometimes in low stakes ways and others that are more serious. One example involves women attempting to search for the perfect hair color. According to hair colorists, clients are using ChatGPT to find the perfect color formulations for their hair. It often goes terribly wrong. Even so, customers are refusing to take their trained professional’s expertise over an AI recommendation. As you can imagine, this doesn’t work out well for them.
AI tools can be useful, but one colorist is urging salon clients to listen to professionals above all else.
Angela Hazelton of the Marie Robinson Salon in New York City tells PEOPLE that customers have been consulting ChatGPT to find their perfect hair color, but it’s backfiring. In one incident, a client asked for a specific gloss formula to remove the warmth from her hair. When the stylist told her that it would also make her golden blonde highlights much darker, the client still insisted on the ChatGPT formula.
“[The colorist] asked the client if she would like her professional opinion and if she would be open to other suggestions and was met with a stern ‘no,'” Hazelton recalls. “Her new client wanted the exact formula Chat had come up with to be applied. She even went so far as to ask to see the bottles of color to be sure that was what was being mixed.”
The formula was applied per ChatGPT’s instructions, followed by a shampoo, hydrating conditioner and gloss. The end result was far from what the client had envisioned.
“To no professional’s surprise, the once golden blonde highlights were now a very dark muddy blonde, which might as well be brown when you’re used to being sunshine-y blonde,” Hazelton says.
The client was “shocked” at her darker color, she recalls, and asked for the gloss to be removed.
“The colorist took her back to the shampoo bowl and clarified her hair, then applied a gentle color remover to remove as much of the pigment as possible,” Hazelton says. “The client couldn’t believe that Chat would do her dirty like that. What should have been a 30-minute, easy-breezy appointment turned into a two-hour ordeal.”
One of Hazelton’s own clients also experienced a ChatGPT mishap. The client had done a color analysis in which she uploaded a photo of herself to the AI tool, and it recommended hair colors that would suit her.
One of the suggestions was a shade of blonde that Hazelton agreed would work well. “The thing that Chat doesn’t take into consideration that a professional does is maintenance,” she says. “This specific client only wants to color her hair three, maybe four times a year, and in between appointments, she wants the color to grow out seamlessly, no harsh grow-out line.”
She continues, “I was extremely transparent about the maintenance this hair color would require. She agreed, and I made her blonde. It complemented her skin tone and eye color beautifully, but 12 weeks after the initial color change, she was sitting back in the chair, asking to return to our original hair color because the blonde upkeep was too much for her.”
Hazelton says that ChatGPT can be helpful in the salon, but clients should be aware of its limits.
“Using ChatGPT can be a fun way to explore the possibilities and options you have for hair color or haircut changes,” she explains. “It can be used as a tool to make suggestions or even create a mockup photo of what you may look like with a new style. But when it comes to making a concrete decision, I would always defer to a professional. There are so many factors to take into consideration when making a change with your hair, maintenance, integrity of the hair, cost, lifestyle; all things that ChatGPT doesn’t think of when it’s giving you answers to your beauty questions.”
Oh man, talk about learning a very expensive, time-consuming lesson. It’s just so wild to trust an AI-suggested color formulation over someone who went to school to become an expert and has extensive experience in this area. We’re officially in a #ChatGPTProblems world. ChatGPT has a reputation for not only being wrong, but for also telling users what they want to hear. This is a massive problem in this age of misinformation. Considering how much some people rely on ChatGPT for everything, it’s not surprising that they’d think the same AI that did their spreadsheets can also predict their hair color formula based on a picture. Maybe they should double check those spreadsheets.
Photos credit: Andrea Piacquadio, Nataliya Vaitkevich, Ivan on Pexels
Some people just don’t have any common sense.
Yeah this one’s not on Chat. People gonna people and colorists have been part time psychologists since forever.
I have no sympathy for people who use ChatGPT at this point. It’s bad for our brains, it’s bad for the planet, it’s bad for labour rights and maybe if it’s bad for our looks, dumb shallow b*tches will listen.
100% this. I’m continually shocked at how many people are causally using AI. If we don’t practice doing things we won’t ever get better whether it’s writing emails or problem solving.
I had a friend use ChatGPT to plan a knitting project and when I asked her if she’d read over it to see if it made sense she said “no”. She was seriously going to get deep into a complicated knitting project with an AI plan. (Face palm).
Oh dear, it will be interesting see what happens with her project.
I remember looking at a site that promised AI could draft a knitting pattern from a photograph. Sure it could, if I provided several photos of the intended project, with close ups for all the design details. Also, a photo of a favorite sweater so it could determine my size and ease. And the fiber and stitch gauge and detailed descriptions of any pattern details, if cables do they go right or left, blah, blah, blah. Basically, it wanted me to teach it how to design a sweater. And then I would have to proofread it to make sure it was right. I can do all of this myself in less time and it will be right the first time.
Same here.
I have friends who by now are completely brainwashed by chatgpt.
“Chatgpt says this/have you asked chatgpt?”
I can’t anymore.
If they end up ruining their hair or their cars I will have no sympathy.
I don’t think people understand that AI is learning. It can can only give answers based on what it has learned and if it hasn’t learned as much as a professional…
Most of our problems as a country boil down to the fact that we stopped respecting educated experts and somehow decided expertise matters none in any field, especially if a crooked billionaire can squeeze an extra vacation home. Ai is an utter mess and being implemented in a way that makes it no better than Ru##ian bot army social media comments. AI cannot manage basic searches without weird tangents and misinformation. The AI captions on most Instagram posts are comically wrong. Hands down the internet was more useful and more accurate before the billionaire fever dream AI has become. Eat the rich and tax those @#$%ers out of existence.
I guess it’s a novelty for some people. It doesn’t appeal to me at all, not to mention the environmental implications.. Someone I know recently said she’d downloaded the app, and she was on it continually while visiting.
I pay an exorbitant amount each month to a colorist because I’m too afraid of the science catastrophe that could occur if I did my own color at home. No way in Hell am I putting a computer program over her expertise.
The same thing is happening in the skincare field! You can really do some damage to yourself. Trust professionals, not misinformation scrapers that are also stealing jobs, destroying the environment and using up all of our water.