BRYAN, Texas — Halloween is just a few days away but some people are starting to plan their spooky weekend now.
As people decide on costumes and ways to enjoy the spooktastic holiday, a booking company is taking new methods to crack down on mass disruptive party reports. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, Airbnb is implementing a machine-learning system to reduce the risk.
The AI-generated party system comes with heightened restrictions on people booking entire home listings for 1 to 2-night reservations. The system is in effect across the United States and Canada.
Naba Banerjee is the rental booking company's head of Trust and Safety and she explained how it goes back to why they put the community-wide ban in August of 2020. In the midst of celebrations, they want to uphold a standard.
"Holidays like this are a highlight for us but these are also times we take very seriously, because peace of mind for our hosts and the homes in which we operate, is incredibly important to us," she said.
This is the main reason for the AI implementation, with the community ban minimizing the rate of party reports by 55 percent since 2020. The technology looks at hundreds of signals to indicate a higher risk for a disruptive or unauthorized party incident including,
- Length of the trip
- Distance of listing
- If the booking is last minute
"Very quickly we started seeing users were circumventing some of these systems by getting an older relative or instead of booking one night they would book for multiple nights that's when we evolved and built our machine learning and AI-based systems."
According to Banerjee, last year over 7,000 users were suspended from using Airbnb since implementation. About 11,000 people in Texas were deterred from booking an entire listing on the platform.
Halloween, July Fourth, New Year's Eve, and Memorial Day have the highest risk of party reports, according to Banerjee.
So you may want to consider not throwing that last-minute Halloween bash anywhere else other than home.
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