Airbnb also disclosed its use of AI on its first-quarter earnings conference call, saying 60 percent of code written by engineers is generated by AI.

TechCrunch reported on May 8 that Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky (브라이언 체스키) said AI bots in customer support handle 40 percent of all inquiries without connecting users to human agents.

That is up from 33 percent earlier this year. Chesky said AI is particularly useful in developing tools for external API partners. He said, "Work that previously required 20 engineers can now be handled by 1 engineer running agents."

He also acknowledged difficulties in applying AI to travel and e-commerce. Chesky said, "No one has yet completed AI suited to travel or e-commerce," and pointed to four problems with the current chatbot approach.

He cited the need for e-commerce to be photo-centric, the inability to adjust directly with sliders or buttons and the need to enter everything as text, the difficulty of comparing thousands of options in a conversation thread, and the fact that most bookings are decided by multiple people while chatbots are one-to-one.

Airbnb's first-quarter net profit rose 3.9 percent from a year earlier to $160 million, and revenue rose 18 percent to $2.7 billion. Lodging bookings increased 9 percent to 156.2 million. The "Book now, pay later" feature launched this quarter accounted for close to 20 percent of total gross bookings.