Airbnb Is Developing Technology to Assess Your Interior Design Skills

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 ...