For two decades, Dove has reshaped beauty, launching 2,800+ campaigns featuring +14,000 diverse women and impacting 100 million lives with initiatives like the Dove Self-Esteem Project. "The Dove Code'' leverages this legacy, urging AI to adopt Dove's authentic beauty standards, fostering inclusivity. This transcends advertising, offering hope amid AI's rise, classified by the UN as a major threat sparking global debate on stereotypes and the future. Dove's response goes beyond activism, directly combating bias in AI through its legacy in advertising. Dove changes AI, because it's actually changing beauty.

"Dove Code" stands as both a timely and timeless initiative, as we stand on the cusp of a future where AI is projected to generate 90% of online content by 2025, influencing all internet databases. Considered part of the 3rd Industrial Revolution, AI issues are already compared by the UN at the same risk of nuclear war. The current data within AI-generated imagery showcases a homogenized beauty standard—37% featuring blonde hair and 53% depicting white, tanned skin— by algorithms that feed, generate and perpetuate more stereotypes, mirroring societal biases, as machines learn from us, due the machine learning technology embedded in AI tools. Such trends threaten to erode the progress made towards embracing a more inclusive spectrum of beauty, underscoring the urgent need for interventions like "The Dove Code."

This initiative becomes timeless through its integration with data analysis, interpretation and collection of Dove's two-decade-long advocacy for real beauty into the digital DNA of AI, changing machines to portray more beauty and diverse standards. Insights from "Global State Beauty Research" by Dove evidence the necessity of this change, revealing that 1 in 3 women feel compelled to alter their appearance due artificial beauty on social media. By embedding Dove's legacy of challenging beauty norms into AI, powered by 20 years Real Beauty data, "Dove Code" not only solves immediate concerns but is an pioneer example of how creative data can positively change our cultural context, by changing bias behavior in ourselves to change machines, for a more inclusive future.

Dove has long been at the forefront of advocating for real beauty, challenging the unrealistic pervasive industry beauty standards. Since the 2004 "Campaign for Real Beauty," Dove has focused on representing real women authentically. Celebrating the campaign's 20th anniversary in 2024, Dove's global beauty study revealed a concerning trend: 1 in 3 women feel compelled to alter their appearance due to online beauty standards. The objective was dual: to honor Dove's legacy by promoting a wider spectrum of beauty across its communications and ensuring that technology accurately showcases this diversity, countering the spread of artificial beauty that perpetuates stereotypes. Despite Dove's commitment to never use AI to create or distort images of women, the broader challenge remains, as we know the world will do so. “The Dove Code” project is Dove's response, aiming to redefine and inclusively represent beauty in the digital age, particularly within AI-generated content.

"The Dove Code" campaign leverages Dove's 20-year legacy of showcasing real beauty to transform the biased beauty standards perpetuated by artificial intelligence (AI). This global initiative illustrates how Dove has become a universal code for altering AI's representation of beauty. When typical searches in generative AI image tools such as Midjourney or DALL-E for "a gorgeous woman" or "a confident woman" yield results with standardized, narrow beauty ideals, adding "according to Dove real beauty campaign" to the search query unveils a drastically different outcome. This approach reveals a diverse array of women of different races, ethnicities, body types, skin tones, and hair textures, showcasing real beauty through AI. By embedding Dove's principles into AI, "The Dove Code" not only critiques the current state of digital beauty standards but also offers a powerful solution for inclusivity, making Dove's vision of diverse and authentic beauty a benchmark for the future.

The strategy is rooted in comprehensive data analysis to target women of all ages globally. Our "Real State of Beauty" research engaged over 33,000 participants across 20 countries, mirroring a study Dove conducted two decades ago. This extensive study illuminated the impact of artificial beauty on women's self-esteem, revealing that artificial intelligence emerged as a threat to women's self-perception in 2024. Rather than merely highlighting the issue, we proactively introduced a solution: presenting Dove as a code for authentic representations of women on AI. Our global campaign, across TV, social media, OOH, and print platforms, strategically exposes how prevailing AI tools generate biased portrayals of women's appearances. In contrast, Dove emerges as a trusted ally committed to fostering diverse representations. Through this multifaceted approach, we aim not just to raise awareness but also to effect tangible change in depicting real beauty in the digital age.

To launch the campaign, we held simultaneous events in New York and London, attended by gender bias activists in artificial intelligence, influencers, and the press. We shared research findings and campaign assets, and explained how to use “The Dove Code” in AI, unveiling a free guide to promote better representation of women. The campaign extended across 30 countries in Q2 2024, featuring films of varying lengths (120'', 60'', 15''), highlighting the powerful idea embodied in the classical "Pure Imagination" song performed by Victoria Canal, a rising talent and advocate for individuals with disabilities. Social media challenges, print, and outdoor executions complemented the campaign, with geo-targeted displays showcasing different outcomes. Examples included localizations for many countries, such as “imagine a Brazilian woman” versus “imagine a Brazilian woman like Dove's real beauty ad” in Brazil, or even “imagine a nurse” versus “imagine a nurse like Dove's real beauty ad” next to hospitals.

Dove changed AI because it has actively redefined beauty through over 2,800 global campaigns, featuring more than 14,000 diverse real women in 20 years. Since 2004, Dove tripled its turnover to reach €6 billion in 2024 - its largest sales volume increase in ten years. Initiatives like the Dove Self-Esteem Project and the Crown Act have impacted over 100 million girls' lives. The campaign received 94% of positive sentiment and marked the biggest PR coverage of Dove's history. The "Global State of Beauty" research findings, a widely viewed campaign film (over 500 million organic views globally), and "Real Beauty Prompt Guidelines" that attracted over 10,000 downloads in two weeks generated, altogether, over 4 billion organic impressions for the campaign. This comprehensive approach resulted in over 1,000 global press and social media publications, with coverage in major outlets like Fast Company, FOX, Globo, NBC, Forbes, and Elle.