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Airbnb (ABNB) is expanding access to OpenAI’s (OPENAI) frontier models, including GPT-6 Astra, for its engineering and product development teams under a new agreement, the companies said on Wednesday.
The expansion builds on Airbnb’s use of OpenAI’s (OPENAI) Codex
22:31, 22 Sep 2026Updated 22:34, 22 Sep 2026
You can swim under an old mill at Moulin du Roc Tombe, located in the Gard region of France
When the weather reaches boiling point, there’s not many outdoor activities that appeal. So when I tell you that our family of four spent most of our time waist deep in a river, it is no lie. And I’m here to tell you that its easier than you think to get the whole family involved.
For us, France is unbeatable for wild swimming. It offers an abundance of clean, warm, and legally accessible natural waterways, lakes, and gorges. France has thousands of miles of pristine rivers and over 1,300 official inland river bathing sites, supported by major mountain ranges like the Alps, Pyrenees, and the Jura that feed crystal-clear water year-round. You can even bathe in some parts of the Seine in Paris. In short, almost anywhere you go, you’ll find a place to dip.
You truly don’t need much to become a wild swimmer apart from a car (more on this later), swimwear, SPF, microfibre towels, a picnic blanket and une baguette. If you’re feeling professional, water shoes are a coup too, as many river beaches are stony. But if I were to recommend one thing, it would be the Wild Swimming France book. With over 1000 recommended and proven safe swim spots all around the country, it’s the Bible of wild swimming, as you guessed it, in France.
The perfect place to stay when you want to indulge in a week or so of wild swimming is somewhere, er, wild. And this is because, by staying somewhere in the middle of nowhere, you are encouraged to venture out to explore what is nearby.
This summer, we chose a stone farmhouse in Saint-Saveur-de-Cruzieres on Airbnb, which was perfectly located nearby some amazing swimming spots. The 5-hectare estate is split into two separate living areas – a large house with three four bedrooms and a master kitchen, and a smaller house with one bedroom upstairs and a kitchen diner downstairs. To the rear, a stunning swimming pool enjoyed views upon views upon views of the fields and hills beyond the grounds. The jewel in its crown was indeed the location. Peaceful, idyllic… it was hard to tear ourselves away.
But when we did, to be found close by was a whole host of wild swims. Wild swimming at the Pont du Gard lets you bathe in the clear, cool waters of the Gardon River directly beneath a 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct. Guinguette La Frigoulette is a family-run riverside restaurant operating since 1969 located in Saint-André-de-Roquepertuis within the scenic Gorges de la Cèze and serves as the perfect casual base for a day of wild swimming along the Cèze River.
Also a restaurant-come-swim-spot, Moulin du Roc Tombe (often referred to as Le Roc Tombe) is a scenic river wild swimming spot positioned on the Cèze river near Saint-Ambroix. Local canoeing routes on the Cèze often stop here for a swim near the old mill. Finally, wild swimming at Vallon Pont d’Arc in the Ardèche region centres around the magnificent 34-meter-high natural limestone arch of the Pont d’Arc, offering crystal-clear, refreshing emerald water sandy river beaches, and plenty of rocks to jump from.
To get truly wild, you need a car. So we hired one for our week in France with Sixt. We chose a BMW X5, with a boot big enough to hold our wild swimming gear, and to climb inside when there was nowhere else to change.
A 4×4, it was able to handle rough terrain, which we encountered on occasion heading down dirt tracks and into makeshift car parks at some of the more remote wild swimming locations. The advisers at Sixt were more than happy to help when we told them what we needed, and our “Beema” became the fifth family member while in France.
Record breaking lake swimmer Neil Gilson shares his advice for safe swimming:
*To find a home from home in France, see Airbnb; for car hire, see Sixt
In one corner is bnb-side, a six-room bed and breakfast on the Isle of Portland – a tiny wedge of limestone tied by a narrow ribbon of shingle to the Dorset coast – that was created to help secure the future of the rock’s much-loved arts festival, b-side.
On the other is Airbnb, the San Francisco-based booking colossus. The battle between them is over the three little letters they share.
b-side says the “bnb” in bnb-side means what it has always meant: bed and breakfast. But lawyers for the Silicon Valley titan say the name of the guesthouse, perched on an outcrop just 4 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, threatens the global brand of the $100bn heavyweight.
“We thought the name was both really obvious and really cool,” said Rocca Holly-Nambi, director of b-side. “b-side was founded almost 20 years ago, so when we set up our BnB in 2024 to raise money for the festival, we just popped the ‘bn’ in front because it’s a universally recognised description of what we’re offering.”
Airbnb doesn’t agree. In May, it sent the first of three legal letters to the tiny social enterprise to demand it cease its attempt to register the B&B using the name it had used since it opened its doors.
“They won’t let us compromise by using a different case, an ampersand or an ‘and’,” said Holly-Nambi. “According to Airbnb, we can’t describe our BnB as a BnB at all.”
For bnb-side, losing the argument could mean more than abandoning a clever name. It would mean replacing signage and rewriting websites, social media and all other material referencing and advertising the B&B.
“That’s not just a huge waste of money – of which we don’t have much – and of the equally valuable time of our volunteers, but it would throw b-side’s core income stream into chaos,” said Holly-Nambi. “We’d have to painstakingly build our reputation and brand back up from scratch all over again.”
Raina Summerson, chair of b-side, is fuming and incredulous. “We opened bnb-side because we were completely dependent on public funding and wanted to be more financially secure,” she said. “bnb-side now generates almost half the festival’s annual £250,000 turnover. If it loses its name, we risk having to establish it all over again.”
Airbnb has opposed the name on three separate legal grounds: that consumers will confuse the two brands, that bnb-side could benefit from or damage Airbnb’s reputation, and that bnb-side will financially profit by misrepresenting itself as an official Airbnb service.
b-side is asking the Intellectual Property Office to reject Airbnb’s opposition in full, with costs awarded in their favour. The case is still under way, with no ruling having yet been made.
Airbnb’s claim has hit a nerve on the proud, windswept outcrop. Cat Wightman, manager of bnb-side, said: “It’s pretty bitter. We’ve watched other small, local hospitality businesses go under, and local people unable to afford homes here, who have been negatively affected by the force with which the Airbnb market has conquered Portland. One person owns eight properties on the island, all of which are rented out on Airbnb.”
b-side obtained pro bono advice and is working with the law firm Stevens Hewlett & Perkins to defend them, but the process is still intimidating. “It’s terrifying but we’re not going to back down,” said Holly-Nambi. “We do things differently here in Portland.”
Craig Beaumont, a trademark attorney and senior associate at Barker Brettell, a law firm that specialises in intellectual property, said that for all Airbnb’s might, this would not be an easy or straightforward win for them.
“This feels like an uphill battle they’re embarking on,” he said. “BnB has long been widely understood as shorthand for a descriptive phrase, and descriptive phrases are available for the public to use.”
bnb-side are not the only company who agree with Beaumont: Companies House records show that in the past decade 14 accommodation companies with “bnb” in their name successfully registered their businesses.
Darren Meale, a partner and trademark litigation specialist at Simmons & Simmons, said it was no surprise the term was used so often. “It’s quite punchy of Airbnb to say they’re so well-known that they can monopolise a term that they only incorporated into their name in the first place because it was a descriptive one that everyone immediately understood, and then say that someone else using the term is going to confuse customers and damage them.”
Lee Curtis, a partner and chartered trademark attorney at IP law firm HGF, agreed that Airbnb “may be testing the limits” of the law. But he pointed to another risk for the lodging colossus.
“There’s a public relations angle to take into account,” he said. “Some companies may welcome getting a reputation for aggressive enforcement but that can backfire when the target is a community organisation, like this one.”
Airbnb has been approached for comment.
BRUSSELS: European cities will gain more leeway to curb short-term rentals such as Airbnb under plans to bring down housing costs in tourism hotspots that the European Union is to unveil Wednesday.
The European Commission is to lay out conditions under which local authorities can limit short lets, as part of an “affordable housing” package that seeks to address what EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has called a “social crisis”.
“Nurses, teachers, and firemen cannot afford to live where they serve. Students drop out because they cannot pay the rent. Young people delay starting families,” she said in a speech last year highlighting the issue as a priority for Brussels.
Though hugely popular with visitors, short-term lodgings are blamed by residents in many popular travel destinations for depriving locals of apartments for long-term rent and pushing up prices.
From New York to Tokyo and Barcelona, a growing number of cities worldwide have imposed or considered restrictions on tourist flats in recent years.
But curbs have often been followed by court challenges from rental providers and tourism operators, resulting in legal uncertainty.
The commission’s Affordable Housing Act aims to provide cities with legal cover, clarifying when authorities can take action without falling foul of EU single market rules.
Cities and other relevant authorities will be allowed to limit holiday rentals as well as the purchase of property for short-term letting purposes in areas deemed “under housing stress”, according to a draft seen by AFP.
The document laid out a series of parameters that needed to be met for an area to be defined as under stress, such as the ratio between house prices and incomes there.
“Population dynamics” and future housing supply and demand will also need to be taken into account, the draft said, adding any measure should be non-discriminatory, necessary and proportionate.
‘Structural solutions’
The legislation will not affect landlords that rent out their own primary residence for short periods of time.
Housing affordability has become a growing issue across the 27-nation bloc in recent years.
Property prices have surged by 60 percent, while rents have climbed by 20 percent over the past decade, leaving millions struggling to find a home they can afford, according to Brussels.
The EU says this is mainly driven by insufficient housing supply but short-term lets add extra pressure in certain areas.
Short rentals account for only about 1.2 percent of the European Union’s housing stock but the share can reach as much as 20 percent in popular districts of some tourist destinations, according to EU data.
Holiday lets “can generate important economic and social benefits, especially for households struggling to make ends meet” but “they may also aggravate housing demand pressures in some constrained local housing markets,” the EU draft read.
Yet, that’s something rental providers dispute.
“For the great majority of cities, the claim that short-term rentals are driving housing stress does not survive contact with this evidence,” tech lobby group CCIA wrote in a letter to the commission this month.
In some cities with restrictions, rents and hotel prices have gone up, the letter added, noting Lisbon recently overturned some of the curbs it had previously imposed.
“Europe’s housing crisis needs structural solutions, and the implementation of this Act should focus on increasing the supply of homes,” said an Airbnb spokesperson.