AUSTIN, Texas — Halloween is a big night for both kids, teens and adults alike, and the fun usually starts ahead of the actual day. All that Halloween fun can also bring some pretty big parties.
But that may be an issue this year. Short-term rental company Airbnb has decided to roll out new technology to prevent huge bashes from happening at their properties.
Blake Carter was born in Central Texas and operates dozens of Airbnb's in the region, and he says owning all of these homes has plenty of responsibility.
"We've had anything from like a light disturbance of neighbors to full blown... Project X-like level party," said Carter.
Carter says he has things in place to prevent big parties from happening, like a minimum stay requirement or prior authorization. Airbnb itself is also stepping up to the plate, in a futuristic way.
"We are utilizing our state of the art AI and machine learning system to identify potentially higher risk one night and tonight booking attempts of entire home listings and prevent those bookings from being made," said Naba Banerjee, the Head of Trust and Safety for Airbnb.
Banerjee says the use of artificial intelligence will help the company crack down on parties. Last Halloween, the company stopped around 11,000 parties in Texas, with about 1,500 of those being in Austin.
"Very quickly, we started seeing that users were circumventing some of these systems by getting an older relative or a friend to book instead of one night. They would book for multiple nights. That's when we evolved and built our machine learning and AI based systems," said Banerjee.
With these checks and balances in place, Carter says it's another way the company can also make sure neighbors next to their properties have peace of mind.
"It's super important to have a good relationship with them because they are kind of our eyes and ears as well, if there ever any parties," said Carter.
Technology like this is still making its way into the mainstream, but both say Carter and Banerjee are encouraged to see it being used for good.