Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on why ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and other AI chatbots cannot 'replace' Google; I think we are still ...
Brian Chesky
has shared an interesting observation about AI chatbots. Chesky believes that despite the rapid rise of
AI chatbots
like
ChatGPT
, Claude and Perplexity, they are now yet ready to dethrone Google as the dominant gateway to the internet.
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Speaking after the company's earnings call, Chesky acknowledged the potential of AI but also emphasised that the technology is still in experimental and growing phase and it will take a lot of time for it to lead.
Why AI is not ready to replace Google
Speaking during Airbnb's Q2 earnings call, Chesky advised the investors against viewing AI agents as a full replacement for traditional search engines. 'I don't think we should think of chatbots like Google,' he said.
'I think we're still kind of feeling out the space'.
Chesky also stressed on the fact that while AI chatbots are powerful tools for customer service and personalisation but they lack the referral power and the search infrastructure which Google offers. The Airbnb CEO also said that AI models which power chatbots like ChatGPT are also not proprietary which means that companies like Airbnb can also use the same APIs.
He further mentioned that the success with AI also depends on custom interface and fine-tuning for specific type applications and not just having the best model.
Airbnb's AI strategy
Chesky also revealed that Airbnb has also deployed a customer service agent built on 13 AI models which are trained on thousands of conversations. Presently, it is live in English across the US and the AI deployment has led to 15% reduction in human support requests.
Moving forward, Chesky said that the AI agent will become more personalised and agentic making it capable of handling tasks such as cancellation of reservations directly.
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Along with this, the company is also planning to expand it to more languages and also integrate it into trip planning and booking management.
Chesky concluded that AI chatbots are definitely transforming how companies react with users but he believes that it is not enough as the AI agents are enhancers and not replacements at least for now.
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