Zillow is a real estate website that lists well over 100 million properties, helping buyers and renters get a feel for the market. The company has a Zillow Premier Agent program where agents pay for advertising and prominent placement.
Zillow Group, the company behind Zillow, has announced that it is adding Virtual Staging, a generative AI feature, to Zillow Showcase, its premium subscription service for agents. Showcase packages a listing with high-resolution photography, interactive floor plans, and other media to create a so-called "super listing" designed to attract more attention from potential buyers.
The pitch is that many people struggle to visualize a space, especially an empty home or one decorated in a style they dislike. Zillow claims that Virtual Staging fixes this problem by letting users see a home"s potential instantly.
Too many buyers overlook what could be the perfect home for their family simply because they can"t see past the furniture or design choices. Virtual Staging helps people envision themselves living in a space. It"s a new way to explore what a home could feel like, and a simple tool for agents to show off a home"s true potential.
To use this, a shopper on a Showcase listing taps a Virtual Staging icon on certain room photos. They can then select from styles including modern, Scandinavian, coastal, and farmhouse. The AI restyles the room, and a user can even refresh the image to get a different furniture arrangement or remove it entirely to see a blank slate.
Zillow is certainly not the first company to offer such a feature. Since the generative AI boom (thanks to the launch of ChatGPT), we have seen AI tools pop up all over the interior design space. Some of the more popular ones include RoomGPT, InteriorAI, and the Canva AI Interior Styler App, among others.
AI is not that uncommon in Zillow"s ecosystem. For example, SkyTour (also exclusive to Showcase) uses a technique called "Gaussian splatting", which is more common in the gaming industry, to turn drone footage into a navigable 3D model of a property"s exterior.
There is also Zestimate, the company"s long-running and sometimes controversial AI-powered tool that provides an estimated market value for homes based on public data and market trends.