Zillow Group ($ZG) podcast mentions
Timestamped Zillow Group ($ZG) mentions across our podcast corpus.
And so how vertically integrated are you? Like, can you just buy a plot of land, build a house, and then sell it on like Zillow or Redfin? Or are there more steps?
John Coogan · TBPN · OpenAI Uncovers Spy Device, Apple x LG, Home Devices Tier List | Thomas Neckel, Kabir Jain, Danielle Axman, John Urschel, Nicolas Sharp, Jason Ballard, Erik Bernhardsson, Josh Tyrangiel, Aida Baradari · 2026-10-14I think that one was in California and the first one was in North Carolina. So what this is showing is that COPS, or Raven users, can take a photo from social media and then immediately figure out where this property is. And crucially, it is seemingly returning at least some data from Airbnb and Zillow. And I can tell that because I looked at the results on the right-hand side of the demo screen. It has some text saying, "Oh, this lovely beachside property," or whatever. I Googled those and I found they related to specific listings on Airbnb or Vrbo, whatever that other short-term rental one is, or stuff on Zillow as well. So there's the ability to locate properties and then also find out a lot more about them because obviously you just click through and you go look at the Airbnb listing or whatever.
Joseph · The 404 Media Podcast · Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo · 2026-10-14Yeah, I mean, that, that's kind of interesting, especially because Airbnb doesn't have the address right away. You have to actually book the Airbnb to get the address. It'll give you like a general location. But I guess with Zillow and maybe like other apartments type websites, home sale type websites, you could get an address in that way. Do we have a sense of how this is working? Because at first I was like, oh, it's just reverse image search. They're taking photos from Zillow and they're testing this with you know, like the exact same photo. But that's, that's not what's happening. Like, these are not the same photos that are on Zillow and Airbnb. They are new photos, and they're using an AI image recognition algorithm of some sort to match characteristics in the photos and tie them to these, the listings on these sites, right?
Jason Kebler · The 404 Media Podcast · Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo · 2026-10-14Yeah. And when you edited this, you pointed out that I should stress this, and it's true, that this is not a reverse image search. It is not just taking an image from social media, then finding the identical one on Zillow. Like, you could do that with Google reverse image search or TinEye or any of these other tools that have been around forever and ever and ever, right? This is taking a photo, looking at unique identifying characteristics in it, such as seemingly the distance between this shelf above the washer dryer, and then this piece of furniture here is at this angle, and it's this distance away from another item in the room or whatever, and then searching through some sort of database images it has to find ones that look ray-ray similar. We don't know exactly how it is pulling data from Zillow and Airbnb or sort of in what fashion.
Joseph · The 404 Media Podcast · Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo · 2026-10-14Yeah, I mean, I would assume, I don't know, but the way that AI is going and with everything, there's probably an agentic layer as well where you put it in and it's go— something is going out and searching the live internet. And so it may be the case that Zillow and Airbnb are not in the training data, or could be, we don't know. But it, it may be the case that when you upload a photo, an agent is actively searching those sites, like, uh, sort of like in real time or something like that. But again, I mean, it's super interesting to think about how it might be working. There's obviously an image recognition algorithm happening here. Like, I think that's fair to say. I wanted to talk a little bit about how this type of work used to be done, and I guess maybe still is by some hobbyists, um, with open source intelligence. So like OSINT human searches where you do have like a photo and you try to geolocate where that photo is.
Jason Kebler · The 404 Media Podcast · Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo · 2026-10-14But finding where a photo was taken inside a house, or rather what house a photo was taken in, it's like, I don't think it's straightforward, you know. Like, maybe you'd figure out the state Somehow, because there was like a chocolate bar in there or some shit. And then you start painstakingly going through Zillow or something like that. This tool, if it works as advertised, seemingly just speeds all of that way up. And I'm looking at this example now, and at least in the demo version, it's drawn like lines between the source image and the one I think it found on Airbnb, and it is drawing lines. Between the power outlets, and it's like, hey, this is similar, and then this machine is similar as well, or whatever. So you would look for those clues, you would try to pivot off them, get more information, search around.
Joseph · The 404 Media Podcast · Cops Can Use AI to Pinpoint Your Home with Just One Photo · 2026-10-14