{"id":468449,"date":"2026-02-14T15:45:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468449\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T15:45:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T15:45:16","slug":"zillow-has-gone-wild-for-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/468449\/","title":{"rendered":"Zillow Has Gone Wild\u2014for AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

This will not be a banner year for the real estate app Zillow. \u201cWe describe the home market as bouncing along the bottom,\u201d CEO Jeremy Wacksman said in our conversation this week. Last year was dismal for the real estate market, and he expects things to improve only marginally in 2026. (If January\u2019s historic drop<\/a> in home sales is indicative, that even is overoptimistic.) \u201cThe way to think about it is that there were 4.1 million existing homes sold last year\u2014a normal market is 5.5 to 6 million,\u201d Wacksman says. He hastens to add that Zillow itself is doing better than the real estate industry overall. Still, its valuation is a quarter of its high-water mark in 2021. A few hours after we spoke, Wacksman announced that Zillow\u2019s earnings had increased last quarter. Nonetheless, Zillow\u2019s stock price fell nearly 5 percent the next day.<\/p>\n

Wacksman does see a bright spot\u2014AI. Like every other company in the world, generative AI presents both an opportunity and a risk to Zillow\u2019s business. Wacksman much prefers to dwell on the upside. \u201cWe think AI is actually an ingredient rather than a threat,\u201d he said on the earnings call. \u201cIn the last couple years, the LLM revolution has really opened all of our eyes to what’s possible,\u201d he tells me. Zillow is integrating AI into every aspect of its business, from the way it showcases houses to having agents automate its workflow. Wacksman marvels that with Gen AI, you can search for \u201chomes near my kid\u2019s new school, with a fenced-in yard, under $3,000 a month.\u201d On the other hand, his customers might wind up making those same queries on chatbots operated by OpenAI and Google, and Wacksman must figure out how to make their next step a jump to Zillow.<\/p>\n

In its 20-year history\u2014Zillow celebrated the anniversary this week\u2014the company has always used AI. Wacksman, who joined in 2009 and became CEO in 2024, notes that machine learning is the engine behind those \u201cZestimates\u201d that gauge a home\u2019s worth at any given moment. Zestimates became a viral sensation<\/a> that helped make the app irresistible, and sites like Zillow Gone Wild<\/a>\u2014which is also a TV show<\/a> on the HGTV network\u2014have built a business around highlighting the most intriguing or bizarre listings.<\/p>\n

More recently, Zillow has spent billions aggressively pursuing new technology. One ongoing effort is upleveling the presentation of homes for sale. A feature called SkyTour<\/a> uses an AI technology called Gaussian Splatting to turn drone footage into a 3D rendering of the property. (I love typing the words \u201cGassian Splatting\u201d and can\u2019t believe an indie band hasn\u2019t adopted it yet.) AI also powers a feature inside Zillow\u2019s Showcase component called Virtual Staging<\/a>, which supplies homes with furniture that doesn\u2019t really exist. There is risky ground here: Once you abandon the authenticity of an actual photo, the question arises whether you\u2019re actually seeing a trustworthy representation of the property. \u201cIt\u2019s important that both buyer and seller understand the line between Virtual Staging and the reality of a photo,\u201d says Wacksman. \u201cA virtually staged image has to be clearly watermarked and disclosed.\u201d He says he\u2019s confident that licensed professionals will abide by rules, but as AI becomes dominant, \u201cwe have to evolve those rules,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Right now, Zillow estimates that only a single-digit percentage of its users take advantage of these exotic display features. Particularly disappointing is a foray called Zillow Immerse, which runs on the Apple Vision Pro. Upon rollout in February 2024, Zillow called it \u201cthe future of home tours<\/a>.\u201d Note that it doesn’t claim to be the near-future. \u201cThat platform hasn’t yet come to broad consumer prominence,\u201d says Wacksman of Apple\u2019s underperforming innovation. \u201cI do think that VR and AR are going to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zillow is on more solid ground using AI to make its own workforce more productive. \u201cIt\u2019s helping us do our job better,\u201d says Wacksman, who adds that programmers are churning out more code, customer support tasks have been automated, and design teams have shortened timelines for implementing new products. As a result, he says, Zillow has been able to keep its headcount \u201crelatively flat.\u201d (Zillow did cut some jobs<\/a> recently, but Wacksman says that involved \u201ca handful of folks that were not meeting a performance bar.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This will not be a banner year for the real estate app Zillow. \u201cWe describe the home market…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,93403,3195,3110,2053,1170,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-468449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-backchannel-nl","12":"tag-chatgpt","13":"tag-google-gemini","14":"tag-housing","15":"tag-real-estate","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}