At its recent Q3 earnings call, Zillow leadership talked up the company’s recent app integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Essentially, if you type “Zillow” into a ChatGPT query, the chat will bring up the Zillow app, then a user can use the Zillow app and its functionality—home searches, connecting with agents, etc.—as if they had opened the native Zillow app, but without exiting the ChatGPT interface.
“We are currently the only real estate app inside ChatGPT,” said Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman during his prepared remarks on the earnings call; other apps, such as music streamer, Spotify made similar integrations with ChatGPT, but not other listing portals like Zillow (so far). During the subsequent investor Q&A, Wacksman predicted that other platforms would follow Zillow’s lead, comparing it to the embrace of mobile platforms.
When the integration was announced in October, questions followed, particularly how this affects the MLS feeds that Zillow pulls data from. Moreover, different MLSs maintain different agreements, so how does Zillow ensure simultaneous compliance with all of them?
Danny Khukalenko, vice president of MLS service provider Constellation Software, posed such questions in a LinkedIn post: does the Zillow display in ChatGPT even fall under internet data exchange (IDX) feed compliance rules, or “does it exist in a gray zone?” as Khukalenko put it.
The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) IDX policy reads that: “All displays of IDX listings must also be under the actual and apparent control of the participant, and must be presented to the public as being the participant’s display.” Under this language, is Zillow or ChatGPT the one who holds the “actual and apparent control?”
In an October FAQ aimed at clarifying the app’s functions and pertinent questions, Zillow maintained its compliance with existing MLS policy.
“Zillow has 100% control over the app experience, which protects MLS data and maintains IDX compliance,” the statement reads, adding that broker and MLS attributions are included along with “other required disclosures and disclaimers.” “The data comes directly from Zillow’s existing MLS agreements—the experience is simply an extension of Zillow’s app experience.”
The statement also clarifies that ChatGPT and OpenAI do not maintain MLS data after the user ends the session, and that the AI is not being trained on confidential IDX data. Copyright has been at the center of debates over AI, as many copyright holders have claimed (sometimes in litigation) that the large language models (LLM) that constitute AI have been trained on copyrighted works; in 2024, a former OpenAI employee gave credence to these claims. OpenAI itself and Google have argued that use of copyrighted materials for LLM training should qualify as “fair use” of materials.
Despite Zillow’s testament of compliance, even a supportive MLS is left in the position of trust but verify. On Oct. 21, NAR essentially deferred on policing compliance, saying it fell to individual MLSs to determine if the Zillow/ChatGPT integration passed their compliance agreements.
“For enforcement, each MLS is individually responsible for conducting its own assessment of technologies that use and display MLS data. This includes considering known public information and determining whether the MLS needs more information from the parties involved or otherwise as part of its evaluation assessment,” said the NAR statement.
In an emailed response to RISMedia, Brad Bjelke—CEO of the MLS UtahRealEstate.com—said “we are analyzing the issue on our end at this time” and withheld further comment as it is “still really early” in the situation.
Michael Wurzer, CEO of FBS (provider of the Flexmls platform), told RISMedia that FBS is getting “many questions” from its MLS customers about the integration. Wurzer said that he had “reserved judgment” on the issue initially, but having reviewed the details, he found the app integration appeared compliant.
“When I saw that Zillow was controlling the primary interface for display of the listings in ChatGPT, that seemed to follow the general terms of the IDX license. It’s important for MLSs to evaluate that based on their own license terms but, generally, Zillow controlling the display in ChatGPT is very similar to display on their website or mobile applications.”
Wurzer added that, “Looking ahead, brokers, agents and MLSs need to evaluate whether LLM integrations like this have a risk of changing or misrepresenting listing content through summaries or other analyses that could include the well-known tendency of LLMs to hallucinate responses.”
Zillow’s Josh Weisberg (a senior vice president of AI at Zillow) and Errol Samuelson (Zillow’s chief industry development officer) recently appeared on the Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered podcast to discuss the development history and functions of the Zillow ChatGPT integration. As Samuelson explained, OpenAI were the ones who approached Zillow about the integration.
“(OpenAI) are now thinking of ChatGPT as a platform or an operating system where you can actually now run apps inside ChatGPT,” Samuelson explained. “So instead of just being an answering machine, it is now like an operating system on your iPhone.”
As for the issue of complying with different rules across about 500 MLSs, Samuelson noted Zillow had previously built a “rules engine” for its website and mobile apps.
“So depending where you are in the country, the underlying rules engine contains all of the local IDX rules, and we adjusted the display to make sure it works. So we started with the people who had built the IDX displays inside the company to say, okay, how do we make sure that in this new app, in this new environment, we can respect the IDX display rules and also ensure that the MLS’ data is protected.”
Samuelson confirmed that during the development, Zillow consulted with a group of “about five” MLS attorneys—“The group that we spoke with would represent I think somewhere between 30 and 50 MLSs around the country”—to offer feedback on compliance issues.
“They gave us some great feedback, at the end of the session they said, this looks really good. And we said, ‘Fantastic.’ And so then it was after that, it was about a week and a half after that, that was the developer day and we demonstrated the app.”
In a statement provided to RISMedia by Zillow about the app integration, the portal affirmed its commitment to the AI integration as well as following industry rules:
“Zillow is leading the next great evolution in real estate search as the only real estate app in ChatGPT, a platform used each week by more than 800 million people worldwide. We always work to ensure industry rules and guardrails are in place and, in this case, we were able to also represent industry interests as part of OpenAI innovation. This partnership expands listing visibility, drives consumers back to agents and showcases responsible innovation that grows opportunity across the industry.”
