Airbnb CEO and Altman friend considers ChatGPT not ready

While Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor have connected their services to ChatGPT, Airbnb wants to wait. The CEO considers the connection option not yet mature enough. Brian Chesky is said to be a close friend of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. He said after his short-term ousting two years ago, Chesky prevented him from making numerous mistakes.

The Los Angeles Times quotes Chesky with the statement, “I don't think it's ready yet.” The reason for not participating is that Airbnb is based on a community of verified members. This likely means that providers, for example, also have to leave tax numbers and other information with the service. According to Chesky, ChatGPT must first become such a robust platform that Airbnb can operate within it in a kind of closed container. Chesky is also said to have advised OpenAI regarding the new function that allows third-party providers to dock with the service.

Apps for ChatGPT – insecure agents

OpenAI had announced at its Dev Days at the beginning of October that third-party apps can be provided for ChatGPT. This is similar to the previous extensions and GPTs, which were once intended to do exactly that—make other services available within ChatGPT, so that one doesn't even have to switch apps or applications. There is a ChatGPT SDK for this. People can then, for example, tell ChatGPT that they would like to listen to music that matches a certain mood; ChatGPT creates the playlist itself but then forwards it to Spotify, via which the music is then played.

Chesky does not specify in the interview exactly what his concern is. However, it is likely about potential attacks. In principle, large language models are vulnerable, but this particularly applies to the agentic capabilities needed for app usage. Even Sam Altman has warned against revealing sensitive data. Airbnb members would do this almost automatically. And indeed, there has already been such an attack where ChatGPT gave attackers personal data from emails revealed.

When asked, OpenAI reportedly referred to the apps being a developer preview. Almost all AI functions, whether from OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic, or Google, are marked as beta or test versions. This usually comes with the disclaimer that errors can occur.

Nevertheless, Airbnb does not do without AI completely—how could one these days. There are functions for automatic translations and agentic search options. The basis is several AI models, primarily, according to Chesky, Alibaba's Qwen. It is said to be particularly fast and cost-effective.

(emw)