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In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm<\/a> launched by Siri\u2019s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn\u2019t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level overview of Airbnb\u2019s larger plans for AI, saying that it planned to accel at the \u201capplication layer\u201d of AI, building one of the \u201cmost innovative AI interfaces ever created.\u201d<\/p>\n Hyperbole aside, Chesky explained that Airbnb doesn\u2019t see itself as an AI infrastructure company \u2014 meaning it\u2019s not going to build its own large language models, but will rely on AI technologies from others, like OpenAI, Meta and Google. Instead, the company believes it can create a new interface for accessing modern AI models. That\u2019s something the GamePlanner acquisition could help with.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026Though the [AI] models are very powerful, the interface is really not an AI interface. It\u2019s the same interface as the 2000s,\u201d Chesky told investors on the company\u2019s fourth-quarter earnings call. \u201cIt\u2019s a typical, classical web interface. So we feel like the models, in a sense, are probably underutilized,\u201d he said. \u201cHere\u2019s another way of saying it. Take your phone and look at all the icons on your phone. Most of those apps have not fundamentally changed since the advent of generative AI. So what I think AI represents is the ultimate platform shift,\u201d the CEO continued.<\/p>\n After the internet\u2019s creation, the rise of mobile technology lifted Airbnb\u2019s business, but AI is going to change things once again, Chesky believes. \u201c[This] is also a shift in power. It\u2019s a shift in behavior. And so I think this is a zero-zero ballgame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Airbnb plans to leverage AI technology and particularly generative AI to provide a more personalized experience for its users, the exec told investors.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine an app that you feel like knows you \u2014 it\u2019s like the ultimate concierge \u2014 an interface that is adaptive and evolving and changing in real-time, unlike no interface you\u2019ve ever seen before. That would allow us to go from a single vertical company to a cross-vertical company,\u201d Chesky added.<\/p>\n Whether or not Airbnb can deliver on these ambitions, of course, remains to be seen. Though Chesky paints a picture of an evolution of the Airbnb user interface, powered by AI, today\u2019s AI systems are often still difficult to use and have a bad habit of returning false information through what are known as hallucinations. That is, the AI bot will simply make things up when it doesn\u2019t know the answer. If the AI models don\u2019t become more accurate under the hood, Airbnb\u2019s plans for application layer improvements could also fall short.<\/p>\n The CEO said he wouldn\u2019t detail specific AI products and services it plans to offer at this time, but the company will make more announcements later this year on the AI front.<\/p>\n