Airbnb’s AI-powered photo tour using Vision Transformer
Airbnb has developed an AI-powered photo tour feature to enhance the guest experience by providing detailed information about listings. The feature uses vision transformers to classify and organize listing photos into 16 different room types. To improve model accuracy, Airbnb employed pretraining, multi-task learning, ensemble learning, and knowledge distillation. The pretraining process involved training a Vision Transformer model on millions of Airbnb listing photos. Multi-task learning utilized a diverse dataset to improve the model's ability to interpret visuals. Ensemble learning combined the strengths of multiple models for robust predictions, and knowledge distillation enabled efficient deployment without sacrificing accuracy. The AI-powered photo tour was launched as part of Airbnb's 2023 Winter Release, and the company continues to refine the models for a better user experience.