Apple hasn’t talked too much about AI so far — but it’s been working on stuff. A lot of stuff.

It would be easy to think that Apple is late to the game on AI. Since late 2022, when ChatGPT took the world by storm, most of Apple’s competitors have fallen over themselves to catch up. While Apple has certainly talked about AI and even released some products with AI in mind, it seemed to be dipping a toe in rather than diving in headfirst.

But over the last few months, rumors and reports have suggested that Apple has, in fact, just been biding its time, waiting to make its move. There have been reports in recent weeks that Apple is talking to both OpenAI and Google about powering some of its AI features, and the company has also been working on its own model, called Ajax.

If you look through Apple’s published AI research, a picture starts to develop of how Apple’s approach to AI might come to life. Now, obviously, making product assumptions based on research papers is a deeply inexact science — the line from research to store shelves is windy and full of potholes. But you can at least get a sense of what the company is thinking about — and how its AI features might work when Apple starts to talk about them at its annual developer conference, WWDC, in June.

Smaller, more efficient models

I suspect you and I are hoping for the same thing here: Better Siri. And it looks very much like Better Siri is coming! There’s an assumption in a lot of Apple’s research (and in a lot of the tech industry, the world, and everywhere) that large language models will immediately make virtual assistants better and smarter. For Apple, getting to Better Siri means making those models as fast as possible — and making sure they’re everywhere.

In iOS 18, Apple plans to have all its AI features running on an on-device, fully offline model, Bloomberg recently reported. It’s tough to build a good multipurpose model even when you have a network of data centers and thousands of state-of-the-art GPUs — it’s drastically harder to do it with only the guts inside your smartphone. So Apple’s having to get creative.

In a paper called “LLM in a flash: Efficient Large Language Model Inference with Limited Memory” (all these papers have really boring titles but are really interesting, I promise!), researchers devised a system for storing a model’s data, which is usually stored on your device’s RAM, on the SSD instead. “We have demonstrated the ability to run LLMs up to twice the size of available DRAM [on the SSD],” the researchers wrote, “achieving an acceleration in inference speed by 4-5x compared to traditional loading methods in CPU, and 20-25x in GPU.” By taking advantage of the most inexpensive and available storage on your device, they found, the models can run faster and more efficiently.

Apple’s researchers also created a system called EELBERT that can essentially compress an LLM into a much smaller size without making it meaningfully worse. Their compressed take on Google’s Bert model was 15 times smaller — only 1.2 megabytes — and saw only a 4 percent reduction in quality. It did come with some latency tradeoffs, though.

In general, Apple is pushing to solve a core tension in the model world: the bigger a model gets, the better and more useful it can be, but also the more unwieldy, power-hungry, and slow it can become. Like so many others, the company is trying to find the right balance between all those things while also looking for a way to have it all.

Siri, but good

A lot of what we talk about when we talk about AI products is virtual assistants — assistants that know things, that can remind us of things, that can answer questions, and get stuff done on our behalf. So it’s not exactly shocking that a lot of Apple’s AI research boils down to a single question: what if Siri was really, really, really good?

A group of Apple researchers has been working on a way to use Siri without needing to use a wake word at all; instead of listening for “Hey Siri” or “Siri,” the device might be able to simply intuit whether you’re talking to it. “This problem is significantly more challenging than voice trigger detection,” the researchers did acknowledge, “since there might not be a leading trigger phrase that marks the beginning of a voice command.” That might be why another group of researchers developed a system to more accurately detect wake words. Another paper trained a model to better understand rare words, which are often not well understood by assistants.

In both cases, the appeal of an LLM is that it can, in theory, process much more information much more quickly. In the wake-word paper, for instance, the researchers found that by not trying to discard all unnecessary sound but, instead, feeding it all to the model and letting it process what does and doesn’t matter, the wake word worked far more reliably.

Once Siri hears you, Apple’s doing a bunch of work to make sure it understands and communicates better. In one paper, it developed a system called STEER (which stands for Semantic Turn Extension-Expansion Recognition, so we’ll go with STEER) that aims to improve your back-and-forth communication with an assistant by trying to figure out when you’re asking a follow-up question and when you’re asking a new one. In another, it uses LLMs to better understand “ambiguous queries” to figure out what you mean no matter how you say it. “In uncertain circumstances,” they wrote, “intelligent conversational agents may need to take the initiative to reduce their uncertainty by asking good questions proactively, thereby solving problems more effectively.” Another paper aims to help with that, too: researchers used LLMs to make assistants less verbose and more understandable when they’re generating answers.

Image: Apple

AI in health, image editors, in your Memojis

Whenever Apple does talk publicly about AI, it tends to focus less on raw technological might and more on the day-to-day stuff AI can actually do for you. So, while there’s a lot of focus on Siri — especially as Apple looks to compete with devices like the Humane AI Pin, the Rabbit R1, and Google’s ongoing smashing of Gemini into all of Android — there are plenty of other ways Apple seems to see AI being useful.

One obvious place for Apple to focus is on health: LLMs could, in theory, help wade through the oceans of biometric data collected by your various devices and help you make sense of it all. So, Apple has been researching how to collect and collate all of your motion data, how to use gait recognition and your headphones to identify you, and how to track and understand your heart rate data. Apple also created and released “the largest multi-device multi-location sensor-based human activity dataset” available after collecting data from 50 participants with multiple on-body sensors.

Apple also seems to imagine AI as a creative tool. For one paper, researchers interviewed a bunch of animators, designers, and engineers and built a system called Keyframer that “enable[s] users to iteratively construct and refine generated designs.” Instead of typing in a prompt and getting an image, then typing another prompt to get another image, you start with a prompt but then get a toolkit to tweak and refine parts of the image to your liking. You could imagine this kind of back-and-forth artistic process showing up anywhere from the Memoji creator to some of Apple’s more professional artistic tools.

In another paper, Apple describes a tool called MGIE that lets you edit an image just by describing the edits you want to make. (“Make the sky more blue,” “make my face less weird,” “add some rocks,” that sort of thing.) “Instead of brief but ambiguous guidance, MGIE derives explicit visual-aware intention and leads to reasonable image editing,” the researchers wrote. Its initial experiments weren’t perfect, but they were impressive.

We might even get some AI in Apple Music: for a paper called “Resource-constrained Stereo Singing Voice Cancellation,” researchers explored ways to separate voices from instruments in songs — which could come in handy if Apple wants to give people tools to, say, remix songs the way you can on TikTok or Instagram.

Image: Apple

Over time, I’d bet this is the kind of stuff you’ll see Apple lean into, especially on iOS. Some of it Apple will build into its own apps; some it will offer to third-party developers as APIs. (The recent Journaling Suggestions feature is probably a good guide to how that might work.) Apple has always trumpeted its hardware capabilities, particularly compared to your average Android device; pairing all that horsepower with on-device, privacy-focused AI could be a big differentiator.

But if you want to see the biggest, most ambitious AI thing going at Apple, you need to know about Ferret. Ferret is a multi-modal large language model that can take instructions, focus on something specific you’ve circled or otherwise selected, and understand the world around it. It’s designed for the now-normal AI use case of asking a device about the world around you, but it might also be able to understand what’s on your screen. In the Ferret paper, researchers show that it could help you navigate apps, answer questions about App Store ratings, describe what you’re looking at, and more. This has really exciting implications for accessibility but could also completely change the way you use your phone — and your Vision Pro and / or smart glasses someday.

We’re getting way ahead of ourselves here, but you can imagine how this would work with some of the other stuff Apple is working on. A Siri that can understand what you want, paired with a device that can see and understand everything that’s happening on your display, is a phone that can literally use itself. Apple wouldn’t need deep integrations with everything; it could simply run the apps and tap the right buttons automatically.

Again, all this is just research, and for all of it to work well starting this spring would be a legitimately unheard-of technical achievement. (I mean, you’ve tried chatbots — you know they’re not great.) But I’d bet you anything we’re going to get some big AI announcements at WWDC. Apple CEO Tim Cook even teased as much in February, and basically promised it on this week’s earnings call. And two things are very clear: Apple is very much in the AI race, and it might amount to a total overhaul of the iPhone. Heck, you might even start willingly using Siri! And that would be quite the accomplishment.

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Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 36, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, hello, I’m thrilled you found us, the Installerverse loves you, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)

I missed you all last week! I was at a friend’s bachelor party in South Carolina, playing golf and eating burgers and mostly staying offline. Thanks to everyone who reached out to say you missed the newsletter! But I’m back now, and so is Installer. We are so back. This week, I’ve been writing about AI gadgets and iPads, watching Baby Reindeer and The Fall Guy, reading A Drink Before the War, and listening to the excellent Challengers score.

I also have for you a new browser for Windows, some new mobile audio options, a couple of fun things to watch this weekend, apps for coffee nuts, and much more. Let’s dig in.

(As always, the best part of Installer is your ideas and tips. What are you into right now? What should everyone else be into right now? Tell me everything: installer@theverge.com. And if you know someone else who might enjoy Installer, tell them to subscribe here.)

The Drop

• Arc for Windows. Arc is still my favorite browser, and even in this first version, it’s surprisingly solid on Windows. (Though it is missing a couple of Arc’s more advanced features and some of the AI stuff.) If you try it, give it time — it’s a really big change from Chrome, but I’m still sold on it. (The iOS app also got some big and much-needed updates this week.)
• Claude for iOS. I’m sure there’s a good rubric out there for which AI model is good for which purposes, but mostly I just gravitate toward whichever app is nicest? The new one from Anthropic is nice: clean, simple, faster than the web app for sure. I also really like the icon.
• “‘No CGI’ is really just invisible CGI.” The fourth and final installment in a really cool series about CGI, from the great The Movie Rabbit Hole YouTube channel. I learned so much about moviemaking and the good and bad tricks filmmakers use from these videos.
• Sofa 4.0. A huge update to one of my favorite movie / book / show trackers. Sofa now lets you collect and organize anything, any way you want — MacStories has a great rundown of all the stuff you can do, and I’m already using it to plan summer trips.
• The Bose SoundLink Max. $399 is steep for a Bluetooth speaker, but I’m very into this one. Super-long battery life; an AUX port; a fun little handle; presumably excellent sound. I’ve been a UE Wonderboom believer for years, but I’ll be trying this one out this summer.
• The Beats Solo 4. I agree with Chris Welch that it’s weird to not have ANC in these headphones. But I’m still into the look, love how light they are, and am stoked about the wired options as well.
• Hacks season 3. I was late to this show about the lives and relationships of two comedians, but it’s funny and weird and extremely worth your time. Only 18 episodes to catch up on! You can do it this weekend!
• The Idea of You. I’m currently biased toward Anne Hathaway because I just found out she’s also an Arsenal fan, which makes her cool and smart and great. But I keep hearing good things about this movie on Netflix about modern life and fame and the weirdness of both.
• “Phone Apps for (Weird) Coffee People.” James Hoffmann is a must-subscribe for all things coffee, but I especially loved this look at all the apps for coffee drinkers. I’ve become a huge Filtru fan in particular, and my coffee process is now fussier than ever. I love it.

Screen share

Riley Testut has had a busy couple of weeks. Couple of months, really. Years, honestly. He’s the developer behind Delta, the game emulator that has taken over the App Store over the last few weeks and that might also be the signal of a new app era entirely. He’s been working on bringing his app store, AltStore PAL, to users in the EU, while also just trying to get some Pokémon playing in.

I asked Riley to share his homescreen, in part just to see if I could snoop on his Delta and ROM setups. I got my wish! Here’s Riley’s homescreen, plus some info on the apps he uses and why:

The phone: Purple iPhone 12 Mini. I absolutely LOVE this phone, and I’m dreading having to upgrade to a larger one eventually. (I would’ve gotten the 13 Mini, except it doesn’t come in purple.)

The wallpaper: A photo of a Pokémon drone show in the shape of Mew, originally taken by Joe Merrick (of Serebii fame), then slightly edited.

The apps: Phone, FaceTime, Photos, Camera, Notes, Maps, Calculator, Find My, Files, Pokémon Sleep, Settings, 1Password, Alamo Drafthouse, Messages, Mail, Safari.

My co-founder / roommate Shane and I are obsessed with Pokémon Sleep (we compete to see who gets the most shinies), so that’s earned a spot front and center. My social folder contains my most heavily used apps (Ivory and Threads), and then below it is the Alamo Drafthouse app, which I use a LOT because I love going to the movies and have the annual pass ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1Password contains literally everything important in my life, so it’s also a staple, but I only made the Delta folder recently once it was released in the App Store. It contains the app itself as well as launchers for Pokémon Emerald and Pokémon HeartGold as well as the amazing Ketchup pokédex app so I can easily look up Pokémon stats.

And because I can’t use AltStore PAL outside the EU, I have the regular AltStore widget to remind me to refresh my apps every week!

I also asked Riley to share a few things he’s into right now. Here’s what he shared:

• I bought myself a Steam Deck a few months ago and have been absolutely loving it! In fact, it’s the main way I kept myself entertained while we were stuck in Europe trying to launch AltStore PAL (god bless Dolphin emulator and Super Mario Galaxy 2).
• I’m also a sucker for super nerdy science YouTube videos, and the History of the Universe channel is literally the perfect thing to put on in the background while I build some Legos or something. I also recently discovered Technology Connections’ channel, which basically scratches the same itch but for tech. I’ll also forever be a fan of Nirvanna the Band the Show, and Shane and I love their “Update Day” video so much we even used it to tease AltStore PAL’s launch.
• At the same time… I’m also deeply invested in the ongoing UFO discourse. Exciting to see something that was dismissed for so long being taken seriously by Congress and others because that’s how science makes progress!

Crowdsourced

Here’s what the Installer community is into this week. I want to know what you’re into right now as well! Email installer@theverge.com or message me on Signal — @davidpierce.11 — with your recommendations for anything and everything, and we’ll feature some of our favorites here every week. If you want even more good stuff, check out the replies to this post on Threads.

“Neal Brennan’s Crazy Good is the funniest stand-up on Netflix since Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra.” – Christopher

“I’ve been obsessing over note-taking apps again because I am insane. Recently tried Tana, and it’s incredible. Feels like the most natural way for me to take notes (bullet journaling, tasks, project management) and is probably going to convince me to ditch Logseq and Obsidian and everything else.” – Rin

“Voiijer. This interesting social media app is focused on posting trips. From day hikes to overnight adventures abroad. I’ve tried it out a little bit, but it seems geared toward being a travel journal. Seems new and interesting.” – Nicholas

“3Blue1Brown. Really like this YouTube channel in general and have thoroughly enjoyed watching this playlist. He breaks down super complicated mathematical concepts into easy-to-digest, bite-size chunks using examples and excellent visualizations. This playlist feels particularly relevant for anyone who wants to dive a little deeper into the technologies and algorithms that are driving this wave of AI hype.” – Abie

“The new video from David Imel about how the ✨ emoji became the symbol for AI is about 1,000 times more interesting than I thought it would be. I don’t want to spoil anything, which is weird to say about a video like this, but honestly, the name of the video is just scratching the surface of how cool it is.” – Luke

I’ve been playing Bonk’s GameBoy games using Delta and writing about games on Backloggd, which is a fun video game-focused review site built very similarly to Letterboxd.” – Sawyer

“My latest rabbit hole is comics and graphic novels, and as someone who strips his ebooks of DRM, I’m still trying to find the Calibre of comics. I landed on YACReader and YACReader Library. It’s good enough, but I feel there’s still space for a really good app.” – Kevin

“Starting to pay more attention to healthy eating, and I remember hating MyFitnessPal. Found the app Cronometer, which is a great freemium alternative. Highly recommended!” – Jonathan

“I just wanted to share how much I’ve been loving the new AppleTV Plus series Sugar starring Colin Farrell as private detective John Sugar, that’s on a case of a missing daughter. It has a great camera, vibe, and overall, the aesthetics are amazing. The plot is even better, with subtle details all around the show. I’ve just rewatched it for the third time (there are only four episodes so far), and I noticed many clues for later development that I hadn’t noticed before. I feel like the showrunners must’ve spent ages on developing this show.” – Vojtěch

“Just got back on the Castro podcast app bandwagon. It’s under new management and they are iterating. The queue system is .” – Advay

Signing off

For the last few weeks, I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about how much people like the Boox Palma. It’s basically just an Android phone, but it has a Kindle-style E Ink screen, which means it’s awful at a lot of things but can download all your reading apps and news apps. I have a lot more testing to do with it, but so far, I love this thing. It’s kinda slow and a little wonky, but it fits in my pocket and is a perfect device for reading and taking quick notes. For years, I’ve cycled between carrying a notebook everywhere, relying on my phone for everything, trying to shove some other device into my workflow, and even occasionally being a weirdo who carries around an iPad. The Palma’s not perfect, but this form factor — Android device with an E Ink screen — might be. I’ll have a bigger piece on this thing in the next couple of weeks, but if you’re intrigued, I love it so far.

See you next week!

In times of economic uncertainty, small luxuries reign supreme.

In 2007, it was hard to go anywhere without hearing someone chanting the lyrics to Lil Mama’s signature bop “Lip Gloss.” In the song, the rapper boasts about her distractingly shiny and luscious pout while name-dropping her go-to brands, MAC and L’Oréal (specifically, “those Watermelon Crushes”). In 2024, however, it feels like this ode to cosmetics is due for a sequel, given the sheer amount of lip glosses, balms, butters, oils, masks, and scrubs that have hit the market recently.

On BeautyTok and Instagram, it’s hard to avoid users showing off their favorite lip gloss-balm hybrids, like Rhode’s Peptide Lip Treatments or Summer Fridays’ Lip Butter Balms — if not actual ads. These two products have become particularly sought out by makeup wearers since their respective launches in 2020 and 2021, appearing on several best lip product lists. Other bestsellers on Ulta and Sephora’s websites include Dior’s Addict Lip Glow Oil, Fenty Beauty’s Gloss Bomb Lip Luminizer, NYX’s Fat Lip Oil, Glossier’s recently reformulated Balm Dotcom, and E.L.F.’s Glow Reviver Lip Oil — not to mention some old classics that are making a retro comeback.

We all know that beauty trends are cyclical. The popular matte trend of the 2010s has been overtaken by the recent desire for ultra-shiny lips, an obvious resurgence of the makeup looks from the ’90s and early 2000s, when Lancome’s Juicy Tubes and Mac Lipglass were all the rage. For many lip-gloss enthusiasts, purchasing and reapplying these products has become its own sort of obsession, resulting in unnecessary — although, it depends on who you ask — large collections.

Last December, 27-year-old beauty influencer Ky Mason (@iamkytoo) posted a whopping five-part “lip product collection tour” on TikTok, featuring hundreds of balms, glosses, and lipsticks from both high-end and low-end brands. “I personally find that some of the drugstore lip oils provide the same amount of shine, hydration, and color options as some of the more expensive options I’ve tried for a fraction of the price,” Mason says. Another influencer, 21-year-old Clara Li, (@ok_clara) describes herself as a “squeezy (tip) lip balm connoisseur. “I have multiple in my bag, one on my nightstand, one in the bathroom, one by the couch, and various spare lip balms stocked around the house, too,” she says.

To accommodate lip gloss superfans like Mason and Li, Hailey Bieber is even selling gray Rhode phone cases that customers can attach their glosses to the back of. Given that a common cellphone attachment is typically a cardholder, this innovative gadget implies that lip balm, specifically Rhode’s, is just as crucial to carry around as your driver’s license. By all accounts, it seems like lip products have become more than just cheap, everyday essentials to mindlessly throw into your purse. In the post-pandemic era, where our mouths are unmasked most of the time, they’ve evolved into miniature status symbols for influencers and casual “makeup girlies” alike.

Still, our beauty routines and consumption habits tend to communicate something deeper about our physical anxieties and economic realities. So what does our current overconsumption of lip gloss tell us about young people right now?

The Kylie Jenner era of lip filler is (kind of) over

Michael Tran/AFP via Getty Images

The last time beauty influencers paid this much attention to their mouths was a decade ago, when reality star-turned-beauty mogul Kylie Jenner disclosed that she had gotten lip filler after intense speculation from the public.

As a result, the desire for big lips saw a peak in the mid-2010s. In 2015, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reported ​​27,449 lip implant procedures. (That’s one procedure every 19 minutes.) There were also a number of hazardous lip-enhancing hacks that emerged on social media, like the “Kylie Jenner Challenge,” which used suction from a shot glass, and a lip-lifting trick involving glue. Most notably, Jenner was able to capitalize off the publicity surrounding her newly plump lips by launching Kylie Cosmetics in 2015, which kicked off by selling matte lip kits to help customers achieve her look.

In the 2020s, people haven’t necessarily become less desperate for large, pillowy lips — although plastic surgeons have noticed more people wanting to dissolve their filler. In the aftermath of the lip surgery boom, beauty vloggers and other social media users began sharing their experiences with filler migration, an unintended side effect where fillers move from the injection site to other areas of the mouth. While this complication is pretty rare, it seems that patients are looking for ways to correct their procedures or enhance the appearance of their lips in minuscule ways.

“We’ve definitely seen an uptick in patients who are seeking a more subtle result from lip fillers and other adjunctive procedures,” says Dr. Peter Lee, chief surgeon at Wave Plastic Surgery in California. In addition to hyaluronic acid filler injections, Lee says other alternatives include longer-lasting fat transfers, silicone or ePTFE (expanded polytetrafluoroethylene) implants, and lip lifts, an hour-long procedure which “subtly elevate the corners of the mouth and creates a more youthful appearance.” Even faster is the “lip flip,” which uses Botox to create the appearance of a larger upper lip and typically takes less than 30 minutes.

Despite the association lip filler has with cultural appropriation, Lee has noticed more Black women coming to his office for lip treatments. “We believe Black women are seeking them out for the same reasons women from other ethnic groups are: They understand that aesthetic lip procedures are not just about making the lips fuller,” he says. “They can create greater definition and shaping of the lips.”

Of course, “lip care” comes back to an endless pursuit of youth

Lee notes another important selling point for lip augmentations: “Fuller lips are not only a feature of beauty; they’re also a sign of youth.”

As a main focal point of the face, thin, wrinkled lips can be an immediate sign of aging. Getting older means producing less collagen, elastin molecules, and hyaluronic acid, resulting in thinner lips for some people. Through that lens, it’s safe to assume that beauty consumers are, in part, stocking up on “lip care” products for the same reasons cosmetic patients want a more natural-looking pout. In addition to signifying attractiveness and sensuality, everyone wants to look like they’re in their 20s.

Right now, Gen Z seems to be experiencing a collective crisis over looking old, which has resulted in an interest in so-called anti-aging skincare for many tweens. That said, it’s not a surprise that young people are running to lip products that offer color and a sheen but promise dermatological benefits. “The fusion of skincare benefits with traditional makeup attributes is one of the major driving forces behind the virality of certain lip products,” says Samantha Arnstadt, VP of creative, strategy, and design at the PR company Front Row. (Among other brands, Front Row represents Summer Fridays and Saie, which has a popular lip gloss oil.) Arnstadt says that these viral products are “bridging the gap between skincare and makeup” by promising not only beauty, but hydration and protection too.

Last year alone, Kylie Jenner’s brand Kylie Skin debuted tubed “lip butters,” strongly resembling Summer Fridays’ products. And the viral skincare brand Topicals’ also released a Slick Salve Mint Lip Balm that quickly became the lip balm du jour on TikTok. Additionally, the Lip Sleeping Mask from Korean skincare brand Laneige has become a cult favorite for its instantly hydrating properties.

Older brands are also noticeably competing for a space in beauty consumers’ “lippie” collections as well. Arnstadt notes that many mass brands have “refreshed their product lines to include lip gloss to align with the current market and appeal to Gen Z.” Other older brands like Vaseline, Nivea, and Aquaphor have released new lip therapy products or repackaged them to match the aesthetic of these newer, buzzier products.

In particular, peptides — short chains of amino acids that help build proteins in the skin — have become a buzzworthy ingredient for marketers, according to New York-based dermatologist Dr. Shereene Idriss. In addition to Rhode, brands Ole Henriksen, Paula’s Choice, and Persona are just some companies that include peptides in their newer lip products. “Certain peptides have humectant properties,” says Idriss. “This means they can attract and retain moisture in the skin and also helps support the skin’s natural repair processes for dry lips.”

For many fans, these promises have a major appeal. “I think a lot of people want their lip products to be moisturizing while still having lasting power of longer than three sips of soda,” says influencer Ky Mason.

In a time of economic decline, lip glosses have become affordable status symbols

Aside from the skincare aspect, there seems to be excitement among people on social media who collect these lip products in large numbers. MacKenzi Nelson, art director at beauty PR company Helen + Gertrude, says this current hoarding of lip gloss represents a pre-existing consumer trend.

“We’ve heard of the ‘lipstick effect theory’ in culture, where sales in affordable luxuries, like lip products, skyrocket in times of economic distress,” she says. “These small ‘treats,’ if you will, bring a big impact physically and emotionally.” In addition to their affordability, lip products are also accessible to people who may not identify as makeup lovers or want to wear a full face of makeup, including influencer Clara Li at one point. “I actually used to be a makeup minimalist in all makeup categories other than lip products,” she says.

Additionally, Nelson says that the “sensory” element of these products has a lot to do with their popularity, as they provide “a moment of ritualistic self-care, comfort, and play.” Li agrees with this sentiment, stating that the lip products are “definitely habit-forming.”

That said, it’s hard not to notice the irony of obsessively purchasing and using these products. The amount of times a person feels they need to reapply or restock on lip gloss seems to undermine their exact purpose of keeping your lips moisturized for long periods. Beauty columnist Jessica DeFino explored this paradox in February in response to a reader’s self-described “addiction” to lip balm. “That lip balm requires constant reapplication doesn’t strike consumers as a product flaw, but as an opportunity to fulfill their personal purpose: buying stuff,” she wrote.

Dr. Idriss also says there’s such a thing as putting on too much lip balm, preventing the health benefits these products advertise. “When you continuously apply lip balm, your lips may become accustomed to the moisturizing effects and stop producing enough natural oils to keep them hydrated on their own,” she says. “As a result, your lips may feel even drier and more chapped when you’re not using lip balm.”

As DeFino put it, the habit of constantly reapplying only seems to enable consumers to stock up on more of these items. On the other hand, these brands, usually offering a variety of shades and flavors, are also successful at aiding this compulsory overconsumption — the more you own, the better.

Much of the packaging and marketing for these viral lip balms telegraph a semblance of luxury and self-care. In Rhode’s marketing materials on social media, the peptide lip treatment is often displayed next to fruits or sugary, sumptuous foods, really nailing home Nelson’s description of lip products as “treats.” Other brands, like Topicals, include their lip glosses alongside other items you would find in a wealthy person’s bag, like a Louis Vuitton wallet and a roll of cash, on their Instagram.

Still, these products offer a low-barrier entry point into cosmetics because of their relatively lower price points compared to more expensive cosmetics. For example, Chanel’s foundation can range from $55 to almost $80, while its Rouge Coco Gloss retails at $40. Non-drugstore but not-exactly high-end brands like Rhode and Summer Fridays offer lip balms and oils are under $30. Plus, actual luxury brands, like Dior and Chanel, offering somewhat accessible lip products help consumers, who can’t afford their clothing or accessories, experience this fantasy.

In that way, it seems like lip gloss has become a low-stakes remedy for a particular type of dread facing everyone — but maybe more vocally, young women. 2023 saw women on TikTok begin to reckon with how much they had been influenced, both by celebrities and average people, into buying needless or ineffective (usually) beauty products on the app. Users declared their attempts to resist these urges with the hashtag #deinfluencing. However, the success of this trend immediately seemed unlikely, given the ad-driven infrastructure of social media that isn’t going anywhere. In buying lip gloss, it seems like beauty consumers have found a happy medium between “deinfluencing” and indulging in their compulsive shopping habits.

While it may not be the reason every person buys lip products, the ability to hoard them without spending a ton of money can create a false sense of opulence and security. In a moment of economic downturn and general doom about the world, it’s comforting to know that we can impulsively spend money on the latest it-girl item and delight in the same vain activities as Kylie Jenner or Hailey Bieber. For someone like Mason, though, collecting lip gloss is maybe not a sign of some sort of existential crisis but simply one of life’s simple pleasures — even if it includes a price tag.

“Do I think it’s possible to finish 300-plus lip products by the time my life is over? Probably not,” she says. “But I’ll have fun counting how many of them I can finish and reviewing them until that time comes.”