Airbnb has been slow to launch AI features in the app, but CEO Brian Chesky said Friday that the company now plans to roll out features based on large language models that would help users search for listings, plan trips and help hosts manage their properties.
In a keynote address during its fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said the company wants to make greater use of multilingual models for customer discovery, support and engineering.
“We are building an artificial intelligence-based environment where the app doesn't just search for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their entire trip, it will help hosts run their business better, and it will help the company operate more efficiently at scale,” he said.
The company separately said it is testing a new feature that allows users to search and ask questions about properties and locations using natural language queries.
Currently, Airbnb offers an LLM-powered customer service bot that enables personalization and communication. The new AI search feature is expected to “evolve into a more comprehensive and intuitive search that will last throughout your journey.”
Asked by an analyst whether Airbnb would feature sponsored properties through AI search, Chesky said the company wanted to get the design and user experience right first.
“AI search currently drives a very small percentage of traffic. We're doing a lot of experimentation. Over time, we'll experiment with making AI search more conversational, integrating it beyond just travel, and eventually we'll end up looking at sponsorship listings,” Chesky said, adding that Airbnb will consider designing an ad unit that fits the conversational search flow.
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Chesky said Airbnb plans to leverage the AI expertise of its new chief technology officer, Ahmad Al-Dahle (previously working on Lamy Meta models), to leverage acquired identity data and review data to make the app more usable.
Airbnb says its AI-powered customer service bot, introduced in North America last year, now handles a third of customer issues without the need for human intervention. Chesky noted that the plan is to allow customers to call the AI bot for help, and to extend language support to customer service as well.
“If we are successful in a year, well over 30% of tickets will be handled by custom service agents, in many more languages, in all the languages we have live agents in. AI-powered customer service will not only be in chat, but will also be by voice,” he said.
The company is also thinking about increasing the use of artificial intelligence internally. Airbnb says 80% of its engineers use AI tools, but the goal is to reach 100%.
Airbnb reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue of $2.78 billion, up 12% from a year earlier.
