Thanks for the comment. I wrote in the article that they designed the icons themselves. My point is about design of UIs in general, not just Airbnb. Not everyone have the budget to hire specialized illustrators.

Here is what Brian himself said in an interview: “Light, texture. I think it's more intuitive, it's more playful. I think AI allows the development of more sophisticated interfaces. People in AI are gravitating to image generating art that has got more dimension to it. And so I think that we've really started to push this more three-dimensional”.

That’s what I mean.