Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code | TechCrunch

"“API partners say they want to be better hosts and need better tools. AI gives huge leverage - where you might have needed a team of 20 engineers before, an engineer can now spin up agents to do a lot of work under supervision. Adopting AI tools gives us leverage to build more software for API partners, accelerating work we previously did not have resources for,” Chesky said."

"“Airbnb has been slowly expanding its use of AI for customer support over the past year, and Chesky said on Thursday that its customer support AI bot now handles 40% of issues without escalating to a human agent, up from about 33% earlier this year.”"

"“I do not think anyone has figured out AI for travel or e-commerce yet [...] The design of a chatbot, as currently constructed, does not work for travel or e-commerce. There are four problems: too much text (most of e-commerce is photo-forward); no direct manipulation (you have to type everything rather than adjust sliders); poor comparison (you can get lost trying to compare thousands of options in a thread); and most bookings are multiplayer, while chatbots are primarily single-player, and not map-native.”"

"“Notably, the company claimed that 60% of the code its engineers produced in the quarter was written by AI - echoing comments by other Google, Microsoft, and Spotify, which have all talked about AI accelerating their programming.”"

AI tools are being used to support engineering, customer service, and search. In the quarter, 60% of code produced by engineers was written by AI. AI is also used to help API partners build better hosting tools, enabling one engineer to spin up supervised agents that perform work previously requiring larger teams. Customer support AI has expanded over the past year, handling 40% of issues without escalating to a human agent, up from about 33% earlier in the year. AI experimentation extends to search functionality. Challenges remain for travel and e-commerce, including text-heavy interfaces, lack of direct manipulation, weak comparison, and mismatch between multiplayer bookings and single-player chatbots.

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