Airbnb has taken its time to launch AI features within the app, but CEO Brian Chesky said on Friday that the company is now planning to integrate features powered by large language models. These features will help users search for listings, plan their trips, and aid hosts in managing their properties.
Speaking at the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said Airbnb wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support, and engineering. He explained that the company is building an AI-native experience where the app does not just search for you, but knows you. It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their businesses, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale.
The company is separately testing a new feature that lets users search and ask questions about properties and locations using natural language queries. Currently, Airbnb offers an LLM-powered customer service bot for some personalization and communications. This new AI search feature is expected to evolve into a more comprehensive and intuitive search experience that extends through the entire trip.
When questioned by an analyst about whether Airbnb would roll out sponsored property slots within AI search, Chesky said the company wants to get the design and user experience right first. He noted that AI search is live to a very small percentage of traffic right now and that the company is doing a lot of experimentation. Over time, Airbnb will experiment with making AI search more conversational and integrating it into more than just the trip. Eventually, the company will look at sponsored listings as a result, considering how to design an ad unit that fits the conversational search flow.
Chesky said Airbnb plans to tap the AI expertise of its new CTO, Ahmad Al-Dahle, who previously worked on Meta’s Llama models. The company will use its trove of identity and review data to make the app more useful.
Airbnb claimed its AI-powered customer support bot, launched in North America last year, now handles a third of customer problems without needing human intervention. Chesky noted there are plans to enable customers to call the AI bot for support and to expand language coverage for customer support as well. He stated that a year from now, if successful, significantly more than 30% of tickets will be handled by a customer service agent, in many more languages. AI customer service will not only be chat, but will also be voice.
The company is also thinking about increasing AI usage internally. Airbnb said 80% of its engineers use AI tools, with a goal to reach 100%.
Airbnb reported better-than-expected revenue of $2.78 billion in the fourth quarter, up 12% from a year earlier.