Airbnb just announced a groundbreaking vision for bringing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into their marketplace. This major initiative will improve search functionality, customer service, and interaction with users. This move follows the announcement that the company had appointed Ahmad Al-Dahle as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Located in India, Al-Dahle joins the global team with strong expertise. He is dubbed the “Godfather of Llama models,” made in Meta, and written for big name publications like Huffington Post and The Next Web.
Al-Dahle has said that under his leadership, Airbnb wants to use large language models to improve customer discovery and support. The company plans to implement AI bots that will assist customers directly, providing them with a more efficient means of obtaining help. Addressing the change during the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, CEO Brian Chesky underscored how important he sees this move being.
Chesky stated, “A year from now, if we are successful, significantly more than 30% of tickets will be handled by a custom service agent, in many more languages, in all the languages where we have live agents. AI customer service will not only be chat, it will be voice.”
This promise to increasing language access in CI is a key element of Airbnb’s larger plan. We see the customer service agent fluent in every language Airbnb has live agents in. This helps make their overall experience more inclusive for users across the globe.
Airbnb’s vision extends beyond customer support. The change reflects the company’s broader efforts to experiment with a more conversational, chatty model for AI-powered search. Chesky said, “AI search is today live to a tiny fraction of traffic. We are doing a lot of experimentation. We’re just getting started though, and look forward to continuing to make AI-powered search more conversational over time. This integration will be to start just with trips, and in the fullness of time we will bring in sponsor listings as well.
True to this vision, Airbnb hopes to develop an AI-native experience that is much more than just an improved search function. Chesky elaborated on this goal, stating, “We are building an AI-native experience where the app does not just search for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their businesses, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale.”
Conversational AI search will make trip planning easier and more intuitive than ever. It probably opens up some pretty sweet new advertising opportunities that could seamlessly tie into this totally dope new search experience. Airbnb’s platform is constantly changing. With Al-Dahle’s expertise, human-to-human contact will be the future of customer interactions.
