Airbnb is increasing the role of artificial intelligence in its customer service operations, with its in-house AI agent now handling roughly one-third of support inquiries in North America. The company plans to extend the system globally and expects AI voice and chat tools to manage more than 30% of total customer support tickets across markets where it operates with human agents.
Chief Executive Brian Chesky told analysts during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the automation effort is aimed at lowering service costs while improving response quality. Management signaled that AI-driven support could represent a significant shift in how the company handles customer interactions over the next year.
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Airbnb recently appointed Ahmad Al-Dahle as chief technology officer, recruiting him from Meta to strengthen its artificial intelligence capabilities. The company outlined plans to build a more personalized, AI-driven application designed to assist guests with trip planning, support hosts in managing their businesses and improve operational efficiency at scale.
Addressing questions about potential long-term risks from emerging AI platforms, Airbnb’s leadership emphasized the company’s proprietary data and infrastructure, including hundreds of millions of verified identities, reviews and integrated host messaging systems. Executives highlighted the scale of payments processed through the platform over nearly two decades as a competitive advantage that standalone AI chatbots would find difficult to replicate.
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Airbnb reported fourth-quarter revenue of $2.78 billion, surpassing analysts’ expectations of $2.72 billion, and projected current-quarter revenue above Wall Street forecasts. The company also disclosed that 80% of its engineers are using AI tools internally, with efforts underway to expand adoption further as it experiments with conversational search and other AI-enabled features to support growth.
Source: TechCrunch