In Israel, haircare brand Pantene used artificial intelligence (AI) to identify potential donors for its Beautiful Lengths initiative, which creates wigs for people who are losing their hair as a result of cancer treatment.

Why it matters

While AI technology that enables audience profiling, such as facial recognition, is often associated with unethical practices, it can be a precious resource if it lends itself to purposeful applications that are favoured by consumers.

How the Pantene campaign worked

• An AI Instagram crawler was trained to identify pictures of potential hair donors – women with hair longer than eight inches – who...