Airbnb is evolving in two directions: On the ground, it wants to compete with hotels by providing a myriad of services; online, it is using AI and people in its Airbnb network to aid travel discovery.

As part of its fall product update, the company is adding services to the app it had launched last year, such as meal delivery, laundry, baby gear rental, ski and boat rental in limited locations, and is expanding grocery delivery.

The second big feature is AI search. The company has taken a cautious approach to rolling out AI features, with CEO Brian Chesky opting to stay away from a chatbot-like interface. Earlier this year, he teased the new search feature for property discovery.

Now, users can switch on a toggle to search for properties via text or voice prompts. Once you start the search, the interface will show you dynamic filters based on your preferences. For instance, if you type “baby” in the AI search filter, Airbnb will automatically show you further filters like cribs, playgrounds, or children’s books and toys.

The platform is also using AI to bring out relevant features of a property, and will let you compare properties in your wishlist by way of AI-powered summaries and reviews.

“We are finally making our first foray into AI search. And what you see is just the very beginning of something. And over the coming months, we’re going to really be iterating this very quickly. It’s not hard to create AI search; it’s hard to create AI search in e-commerce when you have $100 billion going through your platform,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told TechCrunch.

“Anyone can vibe-code a search function, but to do something that doesn’t kill conversion rate, that’s the hard part.”

The company is also doubling down on social features that nudge people to take more trips and book additional experiences such as food tastings and craft workshops. Last year, the app started allowing users to connect with fellow travelers and friends on its platform.

Now, travelers can look at a map based on their connections’ past or upcoming trips. When you tap on a trip, you can see where your connection stayed, and which experiences they sought out. For those conscious about their privacy, there’s an option to not to share their trips with others as well.

Airbnb is also building pages about neighborhood based on guest reviews and other sources to help travelers discover places to eat and things to do.

OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round at a valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Investors are eager to pour more funds into the ChatGPT maker ahead of its anticipated public market debut next year. While Anthropic momentarily outpaced OpenAI at the start of the year, recent strategic refocus on key areas like coding has fueled a 70% jump in run-rate revenue since July, reaching $40 billion in August, according to the report.

The company previously raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation. That funding round was supposed to be its last private raise before an IPO, which had been, until recently, expected to take place this year. However, CEO Sam Altman has now ruled out a public debut in 2026 to prioritize AI safety first.

“I think it is unacceptable to be taking like a 10% chance of killing everybody by the end of the decade,” he recently told Fortune, in response to warnings from safety researchers about AI posing an existential risk to humanity.

The new fundraising, if it transpires, will serve as a bridge round to the IPO, according to Bloomberg.

OpenAI didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

The U.S. government on Tuesday launched its very own AI chatbot — or do we have to call it an SI chatbot now? Regardless, the engineers who worked on the chatbot would undoubtedly know that, as a government-hosted, public-facing AI tool, the internet was going to red team the heck out of this thing.

The government partnered with Google and SpaceXAI to help build the America.gov chatbot, which has proved difficult for people to jailbreak the chatbot so far. (It’s worth nothing, however, that the chatbot says that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, a fact that President Donald Trump still denies.)

But when you try to talk to America.gov about Minecraft, the chatbot appears to have some sort of existential crisis or awakening. Here’s how its roughly 1,800-word long monologue begins:

I see the constituent you mean.

((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.

That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.

I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.

If, like me, you have never played Minecraft, this response may seem like a cause for concern. But the America.gov chatbot is not having a meltdown. This is a rewriting of the Minecraft “End Poem,” written by Julian Gough, which appears after you beat the game.

We don’t know exactly who is responsible for the Minecraft reference, but Trump said in a speech that twenty-year-old programmer Edward Coristine was a lead engineer on the project. If that name doesn’t ring a bell, you might remember him for his nickname “Big Balls,” or his involvement in Elon Musk’s DOGE.

It feels wrong that a government chatbot has Minecraft easter eggs, but for the sake of national security, it’s a relief that America.gov is not hallucinating to the point that it’s penning lengthy poetry.

It’s also a relief that this is an easter egg because the poem that the AI spits out is actually really good, in my opinion. If it were actual AI slop, it would have shattered my existing beliefs. I have looked teenage creative writing students dead in the eye and told them that I don’t think an LLM will ever be able to write something “good,” since it is probabilistic and inherently unoriginal.

You have to admit this kinda slaps, though! Doesn’t this feel like some sort of postmodern take on the futility of government bureaucracy in the face of existential anxiety?

and the republic said I see you

and the republic said you have filed the game well

and the republic said everything you need is within you, and also on USA.gov

and the republic said you are stronger than you know, and your case number is still valid

and the republic said you are the daylight

and the republic said you are the night, and the office is closed, please try again during business hours

and the republic said the darkness you fight is within you, and also a missing wet signature

and the republic said the light you seek is within you, and in the pamphlet

and the republic said you are not alone

and the republic said you are not separate from every other filer

and the republic said you are the public tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own Code

and the republic said I love you because you are the reason we have a ZIP code at all.

It reassures my faith in the enduring power of human creativity over AI slop to know that this oddly good poem has a real poet’s DNA all over it.

So, there you have it. The government’s first public-facing AI has not yet posed a threat to humanity or poetry, at least as far as we know. Now I’m just left wondering how much Trump knows about video games.