Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has revealed that it plans to put generative AI to work in creating improved personalised experiences for guests — or the “ultimate concierge”.
Speaking at the release of the company’s Q4 2023 results, which saw revenues climb 17 per cent and a four per cent lift in sales and marketing spend, Chesky said that the company would use its acquisition of AI firm Siri to create the new experiences.
“Imagine an app that you feel like knows you — it’s like the ultimate concierge — an interface that is adaptive and evolving and changing in real-time, unlike no interface you’ve ever seen before. That would allow us to go from a single vertical company to a cross-vertical company,” Chesky said.
Airbnb reportedly paid as much as $US200 million ($AU309 million) for the AI company in November. However, Airbnb doesn’t plan on using the acquisition to create its own AI technology and infrastructure and will borrow models from the likes of OpenAI, Meta and Google. Instead, Chesky said that it plans to create a new interface for accessing AI models.
“…Though the [AI] models are very powerful, the interface is really not an AI interface. It’s the same interface as the 2000s,” he explained.
“It’s a typical, classical web interface. So we feel like the models, in a sense, are probably underutilized,” he said.
“Here’s another way of saying it. Take your phone and look at all the icons on your phone. Most of those apps have not fundamentally changed since the advent of generative AI. So what I think AI represents is the ultimate platform shift,” Techcrunch reported.
However, Chesky would not confirm specific details about the AI products and services it plans to offer though said that there would be more announcements coming this year.
In its earnings, Airbnb said that it continued to see “great results” from its brand marketing and was making “continuous improvement” in performance marketing that has already resulted in high return on investments.
