A photograph of a washer and dryer was enough for Raven to identify a Charlotte, North Carolina property in a Graylark Technologies demonstration. The result was an Airbnb listing titled ‘Renovated! Walk Uptown/located in 2 Hot Spots!’
Raven is an artificial intelligence tool that allows police to determine which specific home a photograph was taken in using visual clues in the image. The Los Angeles Police Department and the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office have both bought access to it.
The system is designed to spot distinctive features in a picture and find images of the same property on sites including Airbnb, even when the pictures differ or were taken at different times. It can identify interior rooms in hotels and houses listed for sale as well as short-term rentals. Raven appears to draw data from Zillow, Airbnb and Vrbo.
In another company demonstration, Raven analysed a bathroom photograph from social media and pointed to an area of Montecito, California. Its result read, ‘Montecito Miramar Beach House on the Sand,’ directly quoting a Vrbo listing.
Its results are ranked leads for investigators to check and pursue, rather than verdicts on a property’s location. Raven primarily works with properties that appear on short-term rental and real-estate portals, and cannot identify every house in the world.
The software began as GeoSpy, an image-geolocation tool developed by Graylark and trained on millions of images to identify geographic clues in photographs. 404 Media exposed GeoSpy in January 2025 as open to almost anyone, and some users sought help stalking specific women.
Graylark then restricted access to government and enterprise accounts. It rebranded the system as Raven and positioned it for law enforcement, government and enterprise users. Alexandr Wang, now Meta’s head of artificial intelligence, is an angel investor in Graylark.
In October 2026, Graylark chief executive Daniel Heinen said on LinkedIn that the company was introducing the ability to geolocate interior images across millions of short-term rental units worldwide. He said Raven could turn an unidentified room into “a location lead they can verify and pursue” for investigators handling trafficking and exploitation cases. Heinen has also said short-term rentals are often exploited for human trafficking and exploitation.
By that point, Miami-Dade had trained a custom model on county properties. Joseph R. Peguero Rivera, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, told 404 Media that its use had been “limited and largely exploratory,” and that it had so far produced no arrests or breakthroughs.
The listing platforms have challenged the use of their material. Airbnb said it had no relationship with Graylark and was reviewing the report. Zillow said scraping breached its terms and that it takes legal action when warranted. Airbnb, Zillow and Vrbo have objected that the tool scrapes their data without authorisation and violates their terms of service.
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