Airbnb says it's using AI to weed out guests who throw house parties

• Airbnb's CEO said it's using AI to identify which guests are likely to throw house parties.
• Its tech analyzes billions of guest arrivals to see which resulted in a party and which didn't.

Airbnb's CEO revealed the company is using AI to identify which guests are likely to throw house parties before they secure a booking, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Brian Chesky was interviewed by Bloomberg about how the company plans to use AI to fix some of its issues including its longstanding battle with guests who throw disruptive house parties at rentals despite its firm anti-party stance.

"We've used machine learning techniques to look at the last billion and a half guest arrivals and see which yielded a party and which didn't," Chesky told Bloomberg. "If you try to do this through a human eye, you might not notice any patterns, but AI can look through over a billion data points, find a lot of similarities, and create a rule set."

He explained that if an attempted booking raises concerns "we either stop them or we ask them for more information, until we either get comfortable with you or we don't get comfortable with you."

Chesky added that AI will also be used to verify whether listing pictures submitted by hosts match up with satellite images in order to help purge fake listings on the platform.

The company permanently banned house parties in June 2022 after testing a temporary ban during the pandemic in 2020 saying that some guests "have chosen to take bar and club behavior to homes, sometimes rented through our platform."

It further introduced reservation screening technology in December 2022 to prevent some guests from booking out an entire home just for one night unless they have received positive reviews from other hosts.

Chesky did not go into particular technical detail of the firm's AI technology, but its use of AI to predict guests' rule-breaking behavior may raise eyebrows. While AI models can predict, for example, crime in particular areas with some accuracy, researchers have found they can also perpetuate racism.

The CEO has been optimistic about how AI will change Airbnb, saying at Bloomberg's Technology Summit in June that the platform will soon become the "ultimate AI concierge" to help users find the best rentals and experiences suited to them.