Industry
Zillow Has Gone Wild--for AI
As the housing market stalls, Zillow's CEO sees AI as "an ingredient rather than a threat" that can both help the company protect its turf and reinvent how people search for homes. This will not be a banner year for the real estate app Zillow. "We describe the home market as bouncing along the bottom," 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. "The way to think about it is that there were 4.1 million existing homes sold last year--a normal market is 5.5 to 6 million," Wacksman says.
State-sponsored hackers love Gemini, Google says
PCWorld reports that Google's Threat Intelligence Group documented state-sponsored hackers from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran exploiting Gemini AI for cyberattacks. These malicious actors leverage Gemini's capabilities for surveillance, target identification, vulnerability discovery, and debugging exploit code, including developing WinRAR exploits. Google restricts access for identified bad actors, but the report highlights AI's dual-use nature and emerging cybersecurity challenges. "AI" systems aren't just great for raising the price of your electronics, giving you wrong search results, and filling up your social media feed with slop.