In November, Airbnb obtained a stealth firm that is AI by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the startup that is secretive around $200 million, relating to reports. Although the webhost performedn’t telegraph its programs for GamePlanner during the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky these days shared a overview that is high-level of larger plans for AI, saying that it planned to accel at the “application layer” of AI, building one of the “most innovative AI interfaces ever created.”
Hyperbole aside, Chesky explained that Airbnb doesn’t see itself as an infrastructure that is AI — meaning it’s not gonna develop its very own big language designs, but will depend on AI technologies from other people, like OpenAI, Meta and Bing. Alternatively, the business thinks it may produce a interface that is new accessing modern AI models. That’s something the GamePlanner acquisition could help with.
“…Though the [AI] models are very powerful, the interface is really not an interface that is AI. It’s the interface that is same the 2000s,” Chesky told investors on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. “It’s a typical, classical web interface. He said so we feel like the models, in a sense, are probably underutilized. “Here’s another method of saying it. Bring your phone and appear at most of the icons on your own phone. Almost all of those applications have never basically altered because the arrival of generative AI. Just what exactly i believe AI signifies may be the platform that is ultimate,” the CEO continued.
After the internet’s creation, the rise of mobile technology lifted Airbnb’s business, but AI is going to change things once again, Chesky believes. “[This] is also a shift in power. It’s a shift in behavior. And so I think this is a zero-zero ballgame,” he said.
Airbnb plans to leverage technology that is AI specially generative AI to deliver an even more customized experience because of its people, the exec informed investors.
“Imagine an app 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 you feel like knows. That would allow us to go from a single company that is vertical a cross-vertical business,” Chesky added.
Whether or otherwise not Airbnb can provide on these aspirations, needless to say, continues to be to be noticed. Though Chesky paints a photo of an evolution regarding the Airbnb interface, run on AI, today’s AI systems tend to be nonetheless tough to make use of and also have a poor practice of going back information that is false what are known as hallucinations. That is, the AI bot will simply make things up when it doesn’t know the answer. If the AI models don’t become more accurate under the hood, Airbnb’s plans for application layer improvements could also fall that is short
The CEO said he’dn’t information certain AI products it intends to provide today, however the business can certainly make even more notices later on this present year regarding the front that is AI
Airbnb acquired GamePlanner a few months ago, but it wasn’t clear exactly what the startup that is secretive, beyond becoming linked with AI. particularly, GamePlanner had been co-founded by AI pioneer Adam Cheyer, whom co-founded Siri (that has been offered to Apple), and Siamak Hodjat. In a statement circulated during the time of the purchase, Airbnb recommended that the GamePlanner group would make it possible to speed up the company’s AI jobs by integrating its tooling to the Airbnb platform.(*)
