Brian Chesky interview: AI agents need their own operating system

Airbnb rolled out its new AI-powered search this week as part of its fall update, a significant step for a company that has been slow and deliberate about AI. Co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has said in the past that a chatbot-only interface is not fit for travel discovery. With more AI on the way to the Airbnb app, I caught up with Chesky over Zoom to talk about how the company is approaching it, where interfaces are headed, why consumer AI still isn’t working, and what role voice will play.

Chesky hasn’t changed his mind on chatbots. He said they aren’t good for browsing or shopping because they give you a few options at a time, and you have to take multiple turns before reaching a result. But he doesn’t see the current version of Airbnb’s search as the final form either: it’s interface will evolve over time.

“I think that I’ve believed for a long time that a chatbot isn’t the right interface for e-commerce. I think what you’re seeing today is also not the endgame for e-commerce or for travel or shopping. I think that there’s going to be some interface that is, you know, I don’t want to call it a midpoint, but something between a chatbot and what you see in the first version we shipped,” he said.

Continued Chesky: “You know, a lot of people want some things people want to be fast and easy, like ‘Book me a flight, I don’t want to look at it.’ With Airbnb, they enjoy looking at the product. Travel studies show that people actually derive more pleasure in planning and anticipating travel than they do traveling. So you don’t want to take the inspiration and the browsing and the library experience of dreaming away.”

I asked Chesky how Airbnb is preparing for consumer AI agents, which are tools like Instinct and Muse that carry out tasks on a person’s behalf. Agents will need robust software infrastructure on Airbnb’s end, he said, and the company wants to make itself more agent-friendly. In his view, they could be good lead generators.