- Airbnb says 60% of its code is now AI-written
- CEO claims AI helps it work better with AI partners, customer support
- But claims that no one has quite figured out the technology yet
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has highlighted the effect of AI on writing code in his company, claiming that the use of the technology has led to new heights of success.
Airbnb now claims that 60% of the code its engineers produced during the quarter was written by AI tools, showing the technology’s increasing dominance in larger companies.
And when we talked about the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, Chesky seemed to hint that this was just the beginning, as there were still some big hurdles to overcome.
AI coding is on the way
In particular, Chesky outlined how Airbnb is using 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,” noted the CEO. “AI provides tremendous leverage – where you might have needed a team of 20 engineers before, one engineer can now spin up agents to do a lot of work under supervision. By adopting AI tools, we gain leverage to build more software for API partners, accelerating work we previously didn’t have the resources to do.”
The company has also increased its use of AI for user help and assistance, with Chesky claiming that Airbnb’s customer support AI bot is now able to handle around 40% of issues without having to escalate to a human agent.
However, he noted that AI tools still have a number of issues, particularly in how they present information to someone contacting customer support, which can lead to a much poorer user experience.
“I don’t 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 e-commerce is photo-forward); no direct manipulation (you have to type everything instead of adjusting sliders); poor comparison (you can get lost trying to compare thousands of options in a thread); and most bookings are primarily not single-map multiplayer.”
Chesky’s quotes echo a number of other major companies claiming that AI-written code is becoming more widespread — most notably, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently claimed that nearly a third of the company’s code is now produced this way.
However, these results should always be taken with a grain of salt, as more in-depth research has claimed that AI-generated code produces 1.7 times more problems than human code, ultimately leading to longer reviews and the potential for more bugs to make it through to the finished product.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds.
