Airbnb’s CEO has revealed that the company is using artificial intelligence (AI) to preemptively identify guests likely to host parties before confirming their booking, according to Bloomberg.
Brian Chesky, in his interview with Bloomberg, shed light on the company’s initiative to harness AI in addressing several challenges, most notably its ongoing battle against disruptive parties held in the rented properties, despite its strict stance against such gatherings.
“We’ve employed machine learning techniques to scrutinize the last 1.5 billion guest arrivals to discern which resulted in parties and which didn’t,” Chesky informed Bloomberg. “Attempting this task with the human eye might yield no discernible patterns, but AI can analyze over a billion data points, identify numerous similarities, and establish a set of rules.”
Chesky elaborated that if a booking attempt raises flags, the system either halts it or requests further information from the user until Airbnb feels assured about the client’s intent
The company has been trying since 2019 to solve the problem of parties. Here’s a tweet form Brian Chesky.
Furthermore, the AI will also be utilized to cross-check hosts’ listing photos with satellite images, aiming to filter out false advertisements from the platform. Airbnb took a decisive step in June 2022, permanently banning home parties after trialing a temporary ban during the 2020 pandemic, stating that certain guests “transferred bar and club behavior into homes, sometimes rented through our platform.”
Moreover, in December 2022, Airbnb rolled out a reservation verification technology to prevent some guests from booking an entire property for just one night unless they’ve garnered positive reviews from other hosts.
While Chesky refrained from delving deep into the technical specifics of the company’s AI technology, the deployment of artificial intelligence in predicting guests’ rule-breaking tendencies might stir controversy. Although AI models can, to some extent, forecast crimes in specific areas, studies have found that they can inadvertently perpetuate biases, such as racism.
However, the CEO remains optimistic about AI’s transformative potential for Airbnb. Speaking at Bloomberg’s Technology Summit in June, he envisioned the platform evolving into the ultimate “AI concierge”, assisting users in locating the best rentals and experiences tailored for them.
