en.Wedoany.com Reported - Major consumer goods companies are applying generative and analytical artificial intelligence to new product development to shorten R&D cycles, accelerate formula testing, and reduce market launch risks. Reuters reports that companies such as L'Oréal and Mondelez International have introduced AI into laboratories, ingredient research, simulations, and customer preference analysis. L'Oréal stated that AI has increased the development speed of some of its processes by approximately four times, indicating that the technology's value is measured by time-to-market rather than solely by office task automation.

This trend extends AI applications from chatbots to industrial operational models. Companies are seeking tools that not only generate text or support customers but also connect data from R&D, production, sales, and market behavior to make faster decisions on products, packaging, and categories. In the European market, such applications raise issues concerning data, consumer protection, transparency of claims, and liability for AI-assisted formulations. In Croatia, the food industry, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and retail sectors show application potential, but companies must first clean up their data foundations, clarify data ownership, and improve validation processes to truly integrate AI into product development.

From a technical perspective, the focus has shifted from whether models can generate convincing outputs to whether they can be regulated within processes that have owners, metrics, audit trails, and clear boundaries of responsibility. The phenomenon of AI shortening product development cycles should be interpreted through dimensions such as data quality, inference costs, model safety, and actual process integration, rather than solely based on the capability levels demonstrated in presentations.