AI Solving Hair Loss!? Just Take a Photo of Your Scalp with Your Smartphone - The Ambition of Scalp Diagnosis Startup MyHair AI

The story that began with "You're starting to thin a bit"

In a New York salon, a man was getting an ordinary haircut.
French entrepreneur Cyriac Lefort was told by the stylist,
"Your hair is thinning a little."

Feeling singled out as a "balding candidate" while his friend sitting next to him was told nothing, he bought an expensive shampoo as recommended. Then he realized, "When someone is told 'You're losing hair,' they'll buy almost anything."TechCrunch

Later, a specialist told him, "You're not balding at the moment." Relieved, Lefort began investigating the hair loss business. It was a vast market filled with exaggerated advertisements, ambiguous reviews, and clinics that were neither clearly medical nor aesthetic. Despite the flood of information, it was hard to know what was truly reliable.

"Hair loss is a topic that stirs strong emotions in both men and women," he realized, deciding to use AI to bring order to the chaos.

What is MyHair AI?

This led to the creation of the startup MyHair AI, featured in TechCrunch.TechCrunch

The system is simple yet ambitious.

• Users take photos of their crown or hairline with their smartphone and upload them to the app

• A specially trained image recognition AI analyzes hair density, thickness, and scalp visibility

• Visualizes early signs of hair loss with scores and graphs

• Tracks progression over time by accumulating photos

• Recommends scientifically backed treatments or clinics as needed

Rather than simply labeling someone as "Level X hair loss," it can suggest nuances like "You might want to monitor your lifestyle for now" or "Consulting a specialist early would be wise for this pattern."TechCrunch

MyHair AI employs a "hair loss-specific" computer vision model trained on over 300,000 hair images. Unlike many services that use general LLMs for pseudo-diagnosis, it emphasizes medical and scientific accuracy.TechCrunch

Although it's only been a few months since its release, it already has over 200,000 user accounts and more than 1,000 paid subscribers, with over 300,000 scalp photos analyzed. It has partnered with multiple dermatologists and clinics, providing tools to speed up patient photo analysis.TechCrunch

A product born from vibe coding

The surprising aspect is its development process.
Lefort and co-founder Tilen Babnik are a "serial entrepreneur duo" already running multiple startups. MyHair AI is their third project.

The initial prototype was built in a few weeks using the AI coding tool "Cursor" in a style known as "vibe coding." They would write in natural language what kind of app they wanted to create, have the AI write the code, and make real-time adjustments. This ultra-fast development style is now adopted by many startups.TechCrunch

After months of scientific verification and clinical validation, it launched as a consumer app in the summer. Currently, a dedicated engineering team is working on refactoring and ensuring scalability.

The speed of development increased with AI writing the code, leading to the creation of an app that analyzes hair loss with AI—MyHair AI is a symbolic product of an era where AI creates AI.

Why is "hair loss × AI" attracting so much attention?

The background lies in the scale of the hair loss issue.

・Male pattern baldness (AGA) is said to affect 30-50% of men by age 50, with reports of 50 million men and 30 million women affected in the U.S.NCBI

・Statistics show that about two-thirds of men notice some hair loss by age 35, and about 85% feel their hair is thinning by age 50.American Hair Loss Association

・The hair loss and regrowth market, including shampoos, supplements, topical treatments, and hair transplant surgeries, reaches tens to hundreds of billions of dollars and is expected to continue growing.Grand View Research

In other words, hair loss is common yet a deeply concerning issue, and simultaneously a huge business opportunity.

When AI enters the picture, it creates a dual impact: "Can it recommend treatment only to those who truly need it?" or "Will it become a means to sell unnecessary products by stoking fear?"

How did social media react?—A three-layered structure of welcome, humor, and caution

After the TechCrunch article was published, MyHair AI founder Lefort shared it on LinkedIn. In his post, he expressed his ambition to "resolve the confusion in the hair loss market by providing objective data through computer vision, as people don't know what's normal or whom to trust."linkedin.com

The post received positive comments from VCs, fellow entrepreneurs, and friends, such as

• "A great example of solving real-world problems with AI."

• "Read the article, it's fantastic!"

• "A simple yet impactful idea."

and likes steadily accumulated.linkedin.com

On the other hand, overseas forums and social media showed more varied reactions. On Fark threads, comments with dark humor like "We can now blame AI for going bald" were prominent.fark.com

Reactions online can be broadly categorized into three types.

1. Welcoming group: People saved by objective data

   • "It's better for mental health to be told 'You're still okay' with numbers than to worry every time you look in the mirror."

   • "Convenient as a preliminary screening before seeing a doctor."

   • "Being able to record 'before and after' of my scalp is motivating."

2. Those enjoying it as a joke

   • "If I get a notification from AI saying 'You're already bald,' I won't recover."

   • "A new SNS content might emerge where people screenshot their 'baldness diagnosis' and post it self-deprecatingly."

   • "People might start writing 'AI-certified full head of hair' on dating app profiles."

3. Cautious and skeptical group: Is it a new anxiety business?

   • "How trustworthy is it to entrust sensitive data like scalp photos?"

   • "If AI says 'You're at risk,' won't it lead to expensive treatments?"

   • "Should AI even step so close to medical practices?"

Types 1 and 2 are relatively positive, but the criticisms in type 3 are important points common to the entire AI healthcare field.

The two hurdles of privacy and medical validity

Recently, apps that assess skin cancer risk by photographing moles with a smartphone, or services that evaluate rashes and acne with AI, have emerged. At the research level, AI diagnostics using skin images have been reported to achieve accuracy comparable to specialists, but issues like data bias and privacy concerns have also been pointed out.PMC

For "hair loss diagnosis apps" like MyHair AI, the following two points are unavoidable.

1. Handling of image data

   • Scalp photos, like facial photos, are sensitive information that can identify individuals.

   • Where are they stored, how are they encrypted, and when are they deleted?

   • If reused as training data, how is the consent process designed?

2. Limits of AI diagnosis and risk communication

   • The causes of hair loss are diverse, including genetics, hormones, stress, illness, and side effects. AI can only judge the "appearance" from images, not provide a medically definitive diagnosis.

   • If it errs too much on the "safe side," it might prompt most users to visit medical institutions, potentially straining medical resources.

   • Conversely, if users blindly trust a "no problem" result, it could delay diagnosis of other conditions.

In response to these challenges, MyHair AI is said to be advancing collaboration with doctors and clinical verification, but how much transparency it can ensure will likely determine whether it gains user trust in the future.