Omio CTO on AI: Building Products 80% Faster

Tomas Vocetka, CTO of Omio, shared insights into how the travel technology company is leveraging artificial intelligence to transform its product development lifecycle. In a discussion focused on the future of conversational travel, Vocetka detailed how the integration of AI tools, particularly OpenAI's Codex, has significantly boosted efficiency and accelerated innovation within the organization.

Vocetka explained that Omio is actively building products for its customers with AI as a core component. The company has provided all its engineers with access to Codex, a tool that has become integral to their workflow. This access allows engineers to utilize AI across the entire product development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment.

The full discussion can be found on OpenAI Youtube's YouTube channel.

Accelerating Development with AI

The impact of AI on Omio's development speed is substantial. Vocetka stated that tasks which previously took approximately three quarters of a year can now be accomplished within a single month. This represents an eighty percent reduction in development time. He elaborated on this by saying, "We see the speed of things that took us about like three quarters we do within a month nowadays. We build products in 20% of the time that it used to."

This dramatic increase in efficiency is attributed to the capabilities of AI assistants and coding tools. Vocetka noted that while an assistant can handle general queries and tasks, Codex is specifically employed for more intensive, actual work. This specialized application of AI not only makes the process cheaper and faster but also simplifies decision-making. He highlighted that the investment in these AI tools yields similar, if not superior, outputs compared to previous methods.

Rethinking Workflows with AI

Omio's strategy extends beyond mere automation. The company is encouraging a fundamental shift in how its teams approach problem-solving and product creation. Instead of focusing solely on automating existing tasks, Omio is prompting its employees to consider how they would build products and processes if they were starting from scratch with all current AI capabilities available.

Vocetka described this new mindset: "We build products in 20% of the time that it used to as the assistant, you can ask it pretty much anything, but when you need to do actual work, you go to codex, which makes it cheaper, makes it faster, makes it makes the decision making much easier and faster because we are talking about like small investment which brings the similar kind of outputs and outcomes than before." He further emphasized the broader impact, stating, "So we roll out to all our employees that was one of the first things where we started. We are integrating faster, we are building products faster. All functions need to rethink how they do the work, what we think about is like not think like how can I use AI to automate what I have, but moving to the point where we're looking into. So how would we do this if we start today and we had all the AI available and rebuilding the processes and rebuilding really changing how we work."

This forward-thinking approach aims to leverage AI not just for incremental improvements but for transformative changes in operational efficiency and product strategy. By embracing AI models and tools across various communication channels like email, Slack, and other platforms, Omio is positioning itself to adapt and innovate rapidly in the dynamic travel industry.