Airbnb plans to double down on artificial intelligence to improve its user experience for both guests and hosts. During the fourth quarter earnings call, Airbnb’s CEO, Brian Chesky, said the company is building an “AI-native experience” aimed at helping guests book trips, assisting hosts with their listings, and running the company more efficiently. According to Chesky, there’s an AI search tool to help guests book trips that’s live now for a small percentage of users.
In a shareholder letter posted on Airbnb’s website, the company said it is conducting initial testing with AI-powered search that focuses on “giving guests a more natural way to describe what they’re looking for, and ask questions about the listing and location.” The letter said the AI search tool will become “a more comprehensive and intuitive search experience that extends throughout the journey”, but the company did not give a specific date for when it would be available to the public.
Although it may feel like Airbnb was late to incorporating AI into its ecosystem, it introduced an AI chatbot that handles customer service requests last year. While the AI agent is currently only available to users in North America, Airbnb said it already handles a third of customer requests without the need for human intervention, as reported techcrunch. Chesky also said during the earnings call that the AI chatbot will be dealing with “significantly more” customer tickets a year from now and will be rolled out to the rest of the world.
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