LG stakes its claim in AI face control

Ola!

Curse and Coffee friends,

Today, we explore how AI is being used in beauty tech.

Hit reply and let us know what you think (we read all of your kind words).

Coffee at the ready…

The take: Your eye cream is about to start monitoring you.

What happened: LG Household & Health Care won a CES 2026 Innovation Award on 18 November for its AI-powered Hyper Rejuvenating Eye Patch. It's a wearable that analyzes your skin and sends data to your phone.

Why it matters: Consumer electronics companies figured out that selling you a $900 device once is boring. Selling you a device that requires $50/month personalized skincare subscriptions forever? That's the dream. Beauty tech is now hardware-driven skin surveillance with a recurring revenue model.

What to watch: CES 2026 opens on 6 January in Las Vegas. Watch whether Samsung or Panasonic announces competing beauty wearables. If they do, every major electronics manufacturer will be racing to stick sensors on your face and charge you monthly for the privilege.

Your wrinkles are now a subscription service.

You’ll soon have an AI judging your skin.

Before we slurp into today’s brew…

Here are some wordies from today’s sponsor.

Enterprise teams are automating more calls than ever — but without a consistent framework, deployments become unpredictable, costly, and slow to scale.

The BELL Framework introduces a structured way to design, test, launch, and improve Voice AI agents with reliability.

Get the guide enterprises are now using to de-risk voice automation and accelerate deployment.

Download The Free Guide

LG's device pairs a one-time hardware sale with ongoing cosmetic ingredient subscriptions delivered through negative-pressure patches that mimic octopus suckers.

Yes…

Octopus suckers. On your face. For wrinkles.

The tech launched in April 2025 under luxury brand The History of Whoo, then got repackaged for CES with LED add-ons and an AI diagnostic layer trained on 60,000 willing faces.

Meanwhile, Amorepacific grabbed its seventh consecutive CES beauty award the same week with MIT-backed Skinsight patches.

The wearable beauty market is valued at $2.8 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $9.7 billion by 2035.

Why the rush?

Electronics margins are trash. Skincare margins are beautiful.

LG's betting you'll pay $50 monthly for octopus-grade wrinkle cream rather than $900 once for a better TV.

And they're probably right.

CES received over 3,600 submissions this year. Beauty tech drew enough entries to warrant its own judging category.

That's not a trend.

That's every electronics manufacturer realizing they can't compete on TVs anymore, so they're pivoting to your pores.

Welcome to the future: your face is now a subscription platform, and Samsung's probably designing the competitor right now.

Pro: Wearable diagnostics bring clinical-grade skin analysis to your bathroom and enable personalized formulations at consumer prices. Democratization of beauty tech, etc.

Con: Subscription lock-in transforms a one-time purchase into monthly payments while delivering marginal improvements over the moisturizer you already use. You're paying forever for octopus suckers that might work slightly better than Cetaphil.

Our read: LG is pivoting to your face. The octopus tech is the hook. The monthly subscription is the revenue model. You buy the device once, then pay forever for specialized patches that only work with that device.

It's the razor-and-blades model.

CTA Announces CES Innovation Awards 2026 Honorees - CES Official

Over 3,600 submissions across 36 categories. AI, Digital Health, and Beauty Tech received the highest entry volumes, confirming the electronics pivot to recurring wellness revenue.

“60 000-person database underpins the eye patch’s AI” — LG H&H / Korean business press

Amorepacific Named CES Innovation Award Honoree - PR Newswire — Why: Seventh consecutive CES win for MIT-backed Skinsight platform; shows LG's late arrival to established category.

Artificial Octopus-Limb Adhesive Patches - ACS Nano — Why: Peer-reviewed research on Sungkyunkwan University's Mimetics octopus suction tech underpinning LG's device.

Beauty Tech Market Size & Industry Trends - Grand View Research — Why: $66B market in 2024 growing to $173B by 2030; skincare devices dominate with 38% share.

Join your team of caffeinated skeptics. ☕

Opinionated world news that respects your time.

One bold take, the best counter, and the receipt(s) that prove it (all in sixish minutes).

You can read yesterday’s newsletter on expensive trash art here.

For the love of coffee, see you tomorrow!

Enjoy your Monday, keep it caffeinated.

Thanks for reading!

Are you subscribing?

Be sure to get your daily curse and coffee fix by hitting the daily knowledge button below.