Zillow Criticised for OpenAI Integration

Zillow's integration with OpenAI's flagship product ChatGPT has been criticised as a "serious problem" by an industry detractor, who also called on MLSs to suspend Zillow's data feed until it regains compliance.

Under the terms of a new agreement, ChatGPT will surface Zillow listings for users who engage the platform to conduct a home search.

ChatGPT will automatically surface the Zillow App in users' chats and use relevant context to deliver real listings from Zillow's portal, including mirroring the design of Zillow inside the ChatGPT interface. Users will be able to users to ask ChatGPT questions and receive meaningful answers. ChatGPT will show photos, maps and house prices, and guide users towards Zillow's platform directly to undergo next steps such as scheduling tours, connecting with an agent or exploring financing.

But Victor Lund, Managing Director at the consulting firm WAV Group, has penned a blog suggesting the integration violates MLS terms and data licensing.

"It’s impressive, but a violation of the terms of MLS data licensing," said Lund, suggesting Zillow does not have the permission to transmit MLS and Broker data into OpenAI's ChatGPT environment.

Zillow’s IDX licenses permit it to display MLS data on Zillow.com and its mobile apps. Those permissions do not extend to publishing or transmitting that data on any other domain, especially one controlled by another company.

ChatGPT is not a Zillow property. It is a separate, third-party platform operated by OpenAI, which holds no data license with any MLS. When Zillow connected its MCP server to OpenAI’s SDK, it effectively republished MLS listings in an environment that no broker, MLS, or participant controls.

That’s a clear violation of the cooperative rules that underpin the MLS. It’s no different than Microsoft scraping MLS listings without a license and publishing them.

Lund called on MLSs to suspend Zillow's data feed until the company brings its use of ChatGPT into compliance, warning that Zillow should not be allowed to "use broker-contributed listings as a public data feed for an unlicensed AI model."

Zillow’s integration with ChatGPT might look exciting, but it crossed a bright line. Cooperation doesn’t mean asking for forgiveness later. It means following the same rules everyone else does.

If MLSs fail to act, they weaken the very foundation that makes cooperation possible. Zillow built its business on cooperation. Now it’s the MLS’s job to defend it.

Where and how 'for sale' properties appear on Zillow (and elsewhere) has been a major point of contention this year.

In the United States, brokers and real estate agents upload property listings to a Multiple Listings Service (MLS), an online database of homes for sale nationwide. Zillow is the consumer choice for home searches because it syndicates virtually every listing around the country to create a mass marketplace, more or less in real time.

That changed earlier this year when the National Association of Realtors (NAR) softened its rules for brokers uploading listings to the MLS, granting them extra rights to withhold properties from the MLS to explore off-market and pre-market opportunities.

This posed a potential existential threat to Zillow, which responded to NAR's rollback with a hard-nosed listings ban for agents who do not upload listings to the MLS (and by extension Zillow) promptly. Three strikes, and Zillow would ban the property from appearing on its portal.

On the other side of the fence, the brokerage, Compass, went on to sue Zillow in the immediate aftermath of the listings ban. Compass argued that restricting an agent's right to choose how, where, and when their listing is advertised to the market—one of four major lawsuits Zillow now finds itself embroiled in.

Fast-forwarding to today, a syndication agreement with OpenAI is a big move for Zillow, duplicating its user experience on a well-known AI search platform.

But is this the basis of yet another lawsuit? Lund argues that Zillow doesn't own the listings or the data it is redistributing to OpenAI, leaving the party that won and created the listing (the broker) powerless in how the listing is advertised or reproduced.

However, there appear to be some tracks being covered with this integration. OpenAI commented that listings shown on ChatGPT will reflect the order they would appear on Zillow's results page and closely resemble the design and formatting of the Zillow listing. OpenAI could argue that the data is being replicated "pixel for pixel", while search results would also be unbiased according to Zillow's feed.

Addressing potential ethical issues in search results this time around, Zillow said it has "worked with OpenAI to build multiple protections into the Zillow App in ChatGPT... to reduce the risk of bias or discrimination."