In a bid to make users' experience safer and pleasant, AirBnB has recently claimed to have developed a software, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), to analyze guests' suitability by scanning their online activities and social media profiles.
Per an article by The Evening Standard, the global booking platform has come up with a "trait analyzer" software that will scour the internet to find out about a potential guests' online activities and gauge their compatibility and trustworthiness. Details reveal that the software will mark down people whose online activities are linked to drugs, alcoholism, prostitution or hate websites.
Airbnb revealed its intention to use the technology in a patent issued by the European Patent Office last year. Per the piece, the patent, which was published in the United States in 2019, states that the rental company could use its AI-powered technology to scan the web, including a person's social media accounts.
The software would analyze different personality traits to perceive users as untrustworthy. These include involvement in criminal activities and neuroticism as well as psychological traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, among others. Akin to that, the technology would be able to find out if a user has fake social networking profiles or whether they have provided fabricated information about themselves.
According to the patent, the software would be able to carry out a deep internet search, so much so that news articles falling in the crime genre will also be scanned to discover if a user has committed any offenses.