Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code

Airbnb said that artificial intelligence wrote 60 percent of the code its engineers produced in the first quarter. The company discussed its AI efforts during an earnings call focused on coding, customer support, and search. Chief Executive Brian Chesky said the tools help create software for application programming interface partners. He noted that an engineer can now use AI agents to perform work that previously required a team of 20 engineers. The company expanded its customer support AI bot, which now handles 40 percent of issues without escalation to a human agent. That figure is up from 33 percent earlier in the year. Airbnb is experimenting with AI to power its search function. Chesky described difficulties in using AI for travel and electronic commerce. Current chatbot interfaces have too much text, lack direct manipulation, make comparisons difficult, and do not support multiplayer bookings well. Net income rose 3.9 percent to 160 million dollars. Revenue increased 18 percent to 2.7 billion dollars. Nights booked grew 9 percent to 156.2 million. The new reserve now pay later feature drew almost 20 percent of gross booking value in the quarter.