Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the generative AI is improving at a rapid rate and boosting efficiency, but its impact on applications will take a lot longer than expected.
Speaking on Airbnb's second quarter earnings call, Chesky was asked about how generative AI is changing experiences.
Chesky said the enthusiasm for generative AI has surged since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022. "When it was launched you had a feeling that everything was going to change. I think that's still true. But I think one of the things we’ve learned over the last say 18 months or nearly two years since ChatGPT launched is that that’s going to take a lot longer than people think for applications to change," said Chesky.
The Airbnb CEO outlined how the AI boom has revolved around infrastructure as well as large language models. The application layer has largely been untouched by genAI.
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Chesky said:
"There has been a lot of innovation on the chips. There has been a lot of innovation in the models. We have a lot of new models and there's a prolific rate of improvement in these models.
But if you look at your home screen which of your apps are fundamentally different because of the AI? I think it's just going to take time to develop new AI paradigm. ChatGPT is an interface that could have existed before AI.
All of our paradigms are pre-AI paradigms. There has not been one app that I'm aware of at the top 50 app in the app stores in the United States that is a fundamentally new paradigm and as fundamentally different as multi-touch was to the iPhone in 2008. We need that interface change. So that's one of the things that we're working on."
Chesky said that Airbnb will be more than a search box where you type destination, dates and find a destination. Airbnb's app in the future will be much of a travel concierge that has conversations and can adapt to you.
"It's going to take a number of years to develop this," said Chesky. "It won't be in the next year and it's going to just take a bit more time. A new interface paradigm would allow us to attach new businesses."
An index of the world's communities and planning for a trip end-to-end would enable Airbnb to cross-sell inventory including hotels. "There are opportunities down the road with this new interface," said Chesky.
Airbnb's third quarter outlook was light following second quarter earnings. The company forecast revenue to be between $3.67 billion to $3.7 billion, compared to Wall Street estimates of $3.84 billion. Airbnb said it is seeing slowing demand from US customers and shorter booking times globally.
