In the image-obsessed world of online profiles, the photograph is the make-or-break factor separating you from your perfect match. No no no, we’re not talking about your OkCupid profile. We mean your Airbnb listing.
The startup that forever changed the world of vacation rentals is “developing a system to look at the photos of homes uploaded to the site and figure out how ‘attractive’ they are to customers,” according to Bloomberg. Airbnb has reportedly already used machine learning — the same algorithmic analysis of your habits that allows Google and Facebook to show you ads uncannily in sync with your most recent email exchanges and search queries, or more recently, for Pizza Hut to tell you what kind of toppings you’re actually craving by tracking your eye movements — to pair hosts with guests of best fit. The next step in mind-reading technology for Airbnb is the creation of a digital interior design consultants.
A step beyond Houzz.com, their version of the digital designer is more analogous to the human matchmaker who would tell you to try a new haircut or maybe a selfie with a tiger in order to enhance your dating profile and get more matches. In order to increase bookings, “Maybe you should improve your images; maybe you should provide these amenities that are popular,” Airbnb’s Maxim Charkov tells Bloomberg. “We want to bring the insights back to the host.”
Whether this technology will perform as well as a real-life, flesh-and-blood designer remains to be seen, but it’s an indicator of how rapidly machine learning is spreading to new, unexpected applications. (The story also offers a freakier example in predictive HR app Workday, which can allegedly tell when an employee is getting ready to leave your company.) Will interior designers someday also have the luxury of answering to enlightened machines instead of petulant clients? We can only dream.
Images via Airbnb