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In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI company launched by the co-founder of Siri, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Although the hosting company did not announce its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level look at GamePlanner’s larger plans. Airbnb on AI, saying it plans to accelerate at the “application layer.” of AI, creating one of the “most innovative AI interfaces ever created”.
Hyperbole aside, Chesky explained that Airbnb doesn’t consider itself an AI infrastructure company, meaning it won’t build its own large language models, but will rely on AI technologies. Other AI, like OpenAI, Meta and Google. Instead, the company believes it can create a new interface for accessing modern AI models. This is something the GamePlanner acquisition could help with.
“… Although the [AI] the models are very powerful, the interface is really not an AI interface. It’s the same interface from the 2000s,” Chesky told investors during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call. “It’s a typical, classic web interface. So we think the models, in a sense, are probably underutilized,” he said. “Here’s another way of saying it. Pick up your phone and look at all the icons on your phone. Most of these applications have not fundamentally changed since the advent of generative AI. So, I think AI represents the ultimate platform change,” the CEO continued.
After the creation of the Internet, the rise of mobile technology boosted Airbnb’s business, but AI will change things further, Chesky believes. “[This] is also a change of power. It’s a change in behavior. And so I think it’s a zero-zero ball game,” he said.
Airbnb plans to leverage AI technology, particularly generative AI, to provide a more personalized experience for its users, the executive told investors.
“Imagine an app that knows you – it’s like the ultimate concierge – an interface that adapts, evolves and changes in real time, unlike any interface you’ve ever seen before. This would allow us to move from a single vertical company to a cross-vertical company,” Chesky added.
It remains to be seen whether or not Airbnb will be able to meet these ambitions. Although Chesky paints a picture of an AI-powered evolution of Airbnb’s user interface, current AI systems are often still difficult to use and have a nasty habit of returning false information through of what we call hallucinations. That is, the AI robot will simply make things up if it doesn’t know the answer. If AI models don’t become more accurate under the hood, Airbnb’s plans to improve the application layer could also fail.
The CEO said he would not detail the specific AI products and services it plans to offer at this time, but the company will make further announcements later this year on the AI front.
Airbnb acquired GamePlanner a few months ago, but it was unclear what exactly the secretive startup did, beyond being AI-related. GamePlanner was notably co-founded by AI pioneer Adam Cheyer, co-founder of Siri (which was sold to Apple), and Siamak Hodjat. In a statement released at the time of the acquisition, Airbnb suggested that the GamePlanner team would help accelerate the company’s AI projects by integrating its tools into the Airbnb platform.
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