Chesky, who is close friends with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said he advised the AI company on its new capability for third-party developers to make their apps available within the ChatGPT chatbot. The AI company announced those features earlier this month. Airbnb wasn’t among the first apps that are available on the popular chatbot.
While Airbnb has set aside a possible integration with ChatGPT, the company Tuesday announced that it had updated its in-app artificial intelligence tools to let customers take more actions without the need of a live representative.
The company’s AI customer service agent, which it rolled out to all US users in English in May, now displays action buttons and links that can help people complete, say, a reservation change or cancellation. That has led to a 15% reduction in users needing a live representative, cutting average resolution time to six seconds from nearly three hours, Airbnb said. The company plans to add Spanish and French language support this fall, and 56 more languages next year.
“We’re relying a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model. It’s very good. It’s also fast and cheap,” he said. “We use OpenAI’s latest models, but we typically don’t use them that much in production because there are faster and cheaper models.”
The company unveiled an option for guests to share their Airbnb profile with other travelers after they book an experience. Users who have gone on the same tours can also now directly message one another — privacy safeguards are implemented where the conversation can only continue if the recipient accepts a message request, Airbnb said. More social features are coming next year, and Chesky said that longer term these features could lend themselves to user-generated content on the app, where people can seek travel inspiration without leaving the Airbnb site.
“I think the social features, the community, that’s probably the most differentiated part of Airbnb,” he said. “People are the reason why I think Airbnb is such a sticky service.”
