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Half of Airbnb users in the U.S. are now using the companys AI-powered customer service agent, CEO Brian Chesky said Thursday during an earnings call. The tool was quietly rolled out last month and is expected to be available to all U.S. users in the coming weeks. Chesky said the AI assistant has already led to a 15% drop in users needing to contact live support agents. While the technology is still in its early stages, he expects it to steadily improve. Its going to get significantly more personalized and agentic over the years to come, he said following the release of Airbnbs first-quarter earnings. Compared with other travel platforms racing to apply AI for trip planning and other complex tasks, Airbnbs approach remains cautious. Expedia, for example, began promoting its ChatGPT-powered trip planning feature in 2023. Chesky has previously expressed a preference for a gradual rollout. During the companys last earnings call in February, he said Airbnb would begin by applying AI to customer service and expand from there. I dont think its quite ready for prime time, Chesky said of AI in trip planning, likening its current stage to the internet in the mid- to late 1990s. Airbnb reported higher revenue in the first quarter but warned investors of slowing booking growth in the current quarter, citing economic uncertainty in the travel sector. The companys stock was relatively flat as of Friday afternoon.
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E-Commerce
Wake up, the running influencers are fighting again. In the hot seat this week is popular running influencer Kate Mackz, who faces heavy backlash over the latest guest on her running interview series: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Mackz, who has nearly 800,000 followers on TikTok, has previously featured notable figures such as political commentator Dana Perino and biohacker-in-chief Bryan Johnson. On Wednesday, she released her newest interview with Leavitt, who declined to run any miles but did give Mackz a tour of the White House. @katemackz I cant believe you get to wake up and be here every single day, Mackz said as she and Leavitt took a stroll through the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and Leavitts office. Notably absent is the mention of policy or actual politics. The interviewfilmed for both TikTok and Mackzs podcastcomes as the White House intensifies its outreach to nontraditional media, including influencers and podcasters, whose impact on the 2024 election hasnt gone unnoticed. While some view this as a savvy response to a shifting media landscape, critics note that the influencers being granted access tend to lean pro-Trumpor at least avoid asking hard questions. Truly surreal to walk through a place with so much history and meaning, Mackz wrote in the video’s caption. Like much of American politics today, the comments section was deeply divided. Some followers praised the video. Others were less impressed. Oh Kate, this is disappointing, one wrote. Read the room, girl, added another. “The fact she wasn’t even runningyou put a torch to your platform for a video that doesn’t even fit your own brand,” a third follower commented. (Fast Company has reached out to Mackz for comment.) One particularly pointed comment reportedly came from Hope Walz, daughter of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, who asked Mackz to unpin her earlier interview with her fatherposted in the lead-up to the electionfrom the top of her page. As of this writing, the video remains pinned and has over 4.4 million views. While the comment is no longer visible, Walz posted her own video yesterday in response, where she discusses running as a political act. You know who taught me that? she says. Tim Walz. @hopewalz running is political!!! #fyp #running original sound – hopewalz In her video, Walz highlights the privilege embedded in the running worldaccess to safe spaces, healthcare, and climate protectionsand criticizes the current administrations cuts to mental health funding, food banks, and environmental programs. We should not be normalizing these people, she says. Im not going to tell anyone what to do with their page, but I think it is insulting to my dad to leave a certain video pinned, especially when he stands for quite literally the opposite of what this administration is doing. You do not get to both-sides this.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump just won’t let go of his ongoing battle against Harvard. In the latest move against the Ivy League school, Trump on Friday said he will revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. It’s another attempt to defund Harvard, which has flat-out refused to comply with the administration’s long list of demands for higher education institutions, requiring the university to make sweeping changes in order to keep its $2.2 billion in federal fundingwhich the administration has since frozen, prompting Harvard to sue the administration, leaving it to the courts to decide. Those demands include ending DEI on campus; taking actions aimed at ending antisemitism, including when it limits free speech; and trying to enforce or at least have a say in what professors can ultimately teach on campus. “We are going to be taking away Harvards Tax Exempt Status. Its what they deserve!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.In response, Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton told NBC News that not only was there “no legal basis to rescind its status,” but also revoking the university’s tax-exempt status “would endanger our ability to carry out our educational mission . . . [and] result in diminished financial aid for students, abandonment of critical medical research programs . . . [and] more broadly would have grave consequences for the future of higher education in America. Harvard, like most major colleges and universities, is a tax-exempt organization. Trying to pull one university’s funding would likely be challenged in court, as many of Trump’s executive orders have been issued just 100-some days into his second term. (Harvard’s federal income tax exemption as an educational institution is mandated under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended. As an educational institution, Harvard is also exempt from state income tax in Massachusetts, where it is located.) Harvard’s unwillingness to back down has created a target on its backbecause if one university, one law firm, or one state can stand up to Trump, it could pave the way for others to do the same. For example, since Harvard boldly refused to comply with the administration’s demands earlier this month, a number of other schools have followed with some form of resistance. In the weeks following Trump’s decision to try to pull nearly all of Harvard’s $2.2 billion in federal funding, 170 college presidents, including those of Princeton University and Brown University, signed a letter rebuking the administration’s “overreach.” The American Association of Colleges and Universities said in a statement: “As leaders of Americas colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Although Harvard has a vast endowment of $53.2 billion, it relies on several other sources beyond that for its funding, and can only tap about 20% of it for discretionary spending to go toward covering the money lost by Trumps funding freeze. In fact, the majority of Harvard’s endowment has restrictions that stipulate how exactly the Ivy League university can spend that money.
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E-Commerce
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