Airbnb has taken its time launching AI features into the app, but CEO Brian Chesky said Friday that the company now plans to build in features powered by large language models that can help users search for listings, plan their trips and help hosts manage their properties.
During the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said the company wants to increase the use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering.
“We’re building an AI-native experience where the app doesn’t just look for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts run their businesses better, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale,” he said.
The company separately said it is testing a new feature that will allow users to search and ask questions about properties and locations using natural language searches.
Currently, Airbnb offers an LLM-powered customer service bot, for some personalization and communication. The new AI search is expected to “evolve into a more comprehensive and intuitive search experience that extends throughout the entire journey.”
When asked by analyst whether Airbnb would roll out sponsored ownership spaces within AI search, Chesky said the company wants to get the design and user experience right first.
“AI search is live for a very small percentage of traffic right now. We’re doing a lot of experimentation. Over time, we’ll experiment with making AI search more conversational, integrating it into more than just the journey, and eventually we’ll look at sponsor lists as a result,” Chesky said, adding that Airbnb would consider designing an ad unit that matches the conversational search flow.
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Chesky said Airbnb plans to leverage the AI expertise of its new CTO, Ahmad Al-Dahle (he previously worked on Meta’s Llama models), to use its wealth of identity and review data to make the app more useful.
Airbnb claimed that its AI-powered customer support bot, which launched in North America last year, now resolves a third of customer issues without the need for human intervention. Chesky noted that there are plans to allow customers to call the AI bot for support, and to expand language coverage to customer support as well.
“If we are successful, in a year’s time significantly more than 30% of tickets will be handled by a customs agent, in many more languages, in all the languages in which we have live agents. AI customer service will not just be chat, it will also be voice,” he said.
The company is also considering increasing AI use internally. Airbnb said 80% of its engineers use AI tools, but the goal is to reach 100%.
Airbnb reported better-than-expected revenue of $2.78 billion in the fourth quarter, up 12% from a year earlier.
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