Airbnb rolled out its new AI-powered search this week as part of its fall update β a significant step for a company that has been slow and deliberate about AI. Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has said in the past that a chatbot-only interface is not fit for travel discovery. With more AI on the way to the Airbnb app, I caught up with Chesky over Zoom to talk about how the company is approaching it, where interfaces are headed, why consumer AI still isn't working, and what role voice will play.
Chesky Still Doesn't Believe in the Chatbot
Chesky hasn't changed his mind on chatbots. He said they aren't good for browsing or shopping because they give you a few options at a time, and you have to take multiple turns before reaching a result. But he doesn't see the current version of Airbnb's search as the final form either: its interface will evolve over time.
"I think that I've believed for a long time that a chatbot isn't the right interface for e-commerce. I think what you're seeing today is also not the endgame for e-commerce or for travel or shopping. I think that there's going to be some interface that is, you know, I don't want to call it a midpoint, but something between a chatbot and what you see in the first version we shipped," he said.
Continued Chesky: "You know, a lot of people want some things people want to be fast and easy, like 'Book me a flight, I don't want to look at it.' With Airbnb, they enjoy looking at the product. Travel studies show that people actually derive more pleasure in planning and anticipating travel than they do traveling. So you don't want to take the inspiration and the browsing and the library experience of dreaming away."
The 'Multiplayer' Problem
Chesky sees a second problem with chatbots, which is that they are built for one person. He feels that they aren't a collaborative interface, which matters for a product that people often use with family and friends. Over the next three to six months, the company's task is to explore interfaces that enable "multiplayer" AI β meaning AI that several people, such as a group planning a trip together, can use at once.
Airbnb isn't the only one rethinking what an AI interface should look like. As AI tools evolve, new interfaces are also showing up in apps. Startups like Monogram and, more recently, Wabi are experimenting with "generative" interfaces β screens an AI builds on the fly rather than ones a designer fixed in advance. Chesky thinks people will see a mix of deterministic (pre-designed and predictable) and generative interfaces.
Preparing for Consumer AI Agents
I asked Chesky how Airbnb is preparing for consumer AI agents, which are tools like Instinct and Muse that carry out tasks on a person's behalf. Agents will need robust software infrastructure on Airbnb's end, he said, and the company wants to make itself more agent-friendly. In his view, they could be good lead generators.
"I don't necessarily know if I believe in a world that there's apps in the future, but I don't believe in a world where the apps become data layers of a universal simple UI because when you open your iPhone, there is a reason Airbnb's app is a different design than DoorDash, Shopify, and Amazon. Our interfaces should be adaptive to the utility and the function that we're doing. We want to make our app more agentic, and we want to build a lot more user interface controls," he said.
"If I have an agent, but I also want like really great browse functionality, if I want to be able to message the host like an Airbnb, if I want to be able to compare, if I want to be able to verify my identity, if I want to be able to use a map feature, if I want to then be able to add other items, then if I want to stay in the platform, then either the agent has to do a handoff or the agent application would need to build a bit more of, I think, a robust software developer kit to bring the app to you, so to speak."
Chesky thinks that there were concerns around AI tools cutting companies like Airbnb out of the customer relationship, but he said that chatbots have proven to be good at lead gen.
via TechCrunch AI