By Alexander Marot

VIENNA, July 6 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence has allowed French cosmetics company L'Oreal to identify molecules in skincare products that can also be used in shampoo, and has enabled the company to create products four times faster than before, a senior executive told Reuters.

Executives said that consumer goods companies, such as Nestle, owner of the Nescafe brand, Halion, maker of Sensodyne toothpaste, and Mondelez, the chocolate manufacturer, are using artificial intelligence in product innovation, which in some cases helps them test ingredients faster, generate recipe ideas, and address weaknesses in supply chains.

This move towards integrating artificial intelligence into product development comes at a time when consumer goods companies are under pressure to accelerate innovation and cut costs amid changing consumer tastes.

Fabrice Megaban, head of L'Oreal's consumer products unit, which began using artificial intelligence in its laboratories four years ago, said the company identified new molecules for beauty products by predicting their effect on skin and hair.

He added that L'Oreal's latest innovation is the re-employment of molecules used in skincare products in the manufacture of a shampoo that includes collagen to give hair vitality and density.

"It can really be accelerated much more by imagining... new combinations of molecules and new benefits for them," Megarban said at the Consumer Goods Forum's World Summit held in Vienna in late June.

L'Oreal CEO Nicolas Hieronymus launched a "beauty-stimulation plan" last year to encourage innovation after the group recorded its slowest sales growth in years.

Filippo Catalano, head of information and digital technology at Mondelez chocolate maker, told Reuters that AI-powered product innovation represents a turning point.

This technology has helped the company that owns Cadbury and Toblerone to speed up processes and reimagine recipes. The company said that artificial intelligence is capable of creating recipes by presenting "out-of-the-box" ideas, which are then evaluated by a human expert.

Catalano said Mondelez's AI tool reduces the number of samples typically produced during the innovation process. The company stated that it helped develop a gluten-free biscuit and an updated biscuit recipe, a category where 60 percent of the recipes created using the AI tool performed better in areas such as nutrition, sustainability, and cost.

Catalano said that the capabilities of artificial intelligence "accelerate things that we could already do, but shorten the time from months to weeks or from years to months."