Airbnb is handling 30 percent of customer support in North America through an internally developed AI agent and plans to expand it to global markets, TechCrunch reported on Feb. 13 local time.
CEO Brian Chesky (브라이언 체스키) stressed during the fourth-quarter earnings announcement that adopting AI would reduce customer service costs and significantly improve service quality.
Airbnb is strengthening AI-native experiences by hiring CTO Ahmad Al-Dahle (아흐마드 알-달레), formerly of Meta. Chesky said AI would help customers plan trips, help hosts run their businesses and help streamline company operations, and he signalled development of a new AI-based app.
Airbnb is also experimenting with AI-powered search. It is testing conversational search by applying AI search to some traffic and plans to integrate sponsored listings in the future. The company said AI adoption has also raised engineers' productivity. It said 80 percent of engineers are using AI tools and it plans to expand that to 100 percent.
Airbnb posted fourth-quarter revenue of $2.78 billion, beating market expectations.
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr