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- Airbnb says 60% of its code is now AI-written
- CEO claims AI is helping it work better with AI partners, customer support
- But claims no-one has fully figured out the technology yet
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has highlighted the effect of AI on writing code in his business, claiming that using the technology has led to new heights of success.
Airbnb now claims 60% of the code its engineers produced over the quarter was written by AI tools, showing the increasing dominance of the technology in larger businesses.
And speaking on the company's Q1 2026 earning call, Chesky seemed to suggest this was only the beginning, as there were still some major hurdles to overcome.
AI coding on the rise
In particular, Chesky outlined how Airbnb uses AI to build tools for its API partners, who manage their properties using different software.
“API partners say they want to be better hosts and need better tools," the CEO noted. "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."
The company has also been increasing its use of AI for user help and assistance, with Chesky claiming Airbnb's customer support AI bot is now able to handle around 40% of issues without needing to escalate to a human agent.
However, he noted AI tools still have a number of issues, particularly in terms of how they present information to someone contacting customer support, which can lead to a much worse user experience.
“I do not think anyone has figured out AI for travel or e-commerce yet," Chesky said. "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."
Chesky's quotes echo a number of other major businesses claiming that AI-written code is becoming more widespread - most notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed nearly one-third of the company's code is now produced this way.
However these findings should always be taken with a pinch of salt, as more in-depth research has claimed AI-generated code produces 1.7x more issues than human code, ultimately leading to longer reviews and the potential for more bugs to make it through to the finished product.
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