AI Powers Airbnb’s Code Migration, But Human Oversight Still Key, Say Tech Giants

In a bold demonstration of AI’s growing role in software development, Airbnb has successfully completed a large-scale code migration project using large language models (LLMs), dramatically reducing the timeline from an estimated 1.5 years to just six weeks.

The project involved updating approximately 3,500 React component test files from Enzyme to the more modern React Testing Library (RTL). 

According to Airbnb software engineer Charles Covey-Brandt, the company’s AI-driven pipeline used a combination of automated validation steps and frontier LLMs to handle the bulk of the transformation. Impressively, 75% of the files were migrated within just four hours, thanks to robust automation and intelligent retries powered by dynamic prompt engineering with context-rich inputs of up to 100,000 tokens. 

Despite this efficiency, about 900 files initially failed validation. Airbnb employed iterative tools and a status-tracking system to bring that number down to fewer than 100, which were finally resolved manually—underscoring the continued need for human intervention in such processes.

Other tech giants echo this hybrid approach. Google, in a recent report, noted a 50% speed increase in migrating codebases using LLMs. 

One project converting ID types in the Google Ads system—originally estimated to take hundreds of engineering years—was largely automated, with 80% of code changes authored by AI. However, inaccuracies

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