‘It’s a Bird!’ ‘It’s a Plane!’ No—It’s an AI Balloon Taking Photos of Your Home for Insurers

Homeowners may want to look up: High in the stratosphere, balloon-deployed robots are snapping images of rooftops, yards, and entire neighborhoods.

They’re part of a new wave of aerial technology developed by Brooklyn-based startup Near Space Labs, which uses AI-powered robots floated to the edge of space to capture 7 centimeter-resolution images of everything from wildfire fronts, to encroaching vegetation on power lines, to residential home insurance risk exposure.

Insurers say this technology could help them more accurately understand and price risk at a time of broader financial instability for the industry. But privacy experts and homeowners are raising alarms. With no clear federal rules in place, they worry the technology could be used to deny claims, drop coverage, or monitor homes without consent.

The implications are already reaching lawmakers. In response to public concern, California introduced legislation to require notice to homeowners before the technology is used, in a signal that this low-profile tech may soon become a major flashpoint in the fight over privacy, property rights, and insurance practices.

One balloon, 800,000 drones’ worth of imagery

Near Space Labs’ high-tech balloons carry autonomous devices known as Swift robots. Once released, they ascend into the upper atmosphere and operate independently, covering vast geographic areas. A single Swift can collect as much visual data as it would take 800,000 drones to gather, according to the company.

“We provide frequent, high quality and very cost effective imagery, and our mission is to be the Earth data backbone for climate resilience,” explains the company's CEO and co-founder, Rema Matevosyan.

That trifecta—frequent, high-quality, cost-effective imagery—is exactly why insurers have become Near Space Labs’ primary customer base. The Swift cameras capture imagery precise enough to spot a single loose shingle on a home’s roof.

That level of detail matters, Matevosyan says, because early detection can help prevent a small issue from becoming catastrophic. “A missing shingle hints on a higher risk of a policy, because if you're able to repair the shingle, it doesn't become, you know, a multi-$100,000 issue down the line for the consumer,” she explains.

But the same clarity that makes the imagery so useful is also what raises alarm for some homeowners, who worry that such close-up views could amount to surveillance.

Matevosyan insists that isn’t the case. “Our data, intrinsically, is privacy. ... It's overhead data and nothing else. There are no angles, no nothing. It's just top down imagery,” she says.

The eye in the sky over Arizona

To understand why insurers are adopting the tech and where it may be headed next, look no further than the Southwest. In just one week, the Arizona Daily Mirror identified nine separate balloon flights over the Phoenix metro area.

At first glance, Arizona may not seem like a high-priority market. Homeowners here enjoy some of the most affordable insurance premiums in the U.S., with most paying between $1,000 and $1,500 per year, according to a Realtor.com® analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. But below the surface, concerns are rising.

Historically, wildfire risk in Arizona was concentrated in the pine forests of the north. But today, even the Sonoran Desert, once considered nearly fireproof, is becoming increasingly vulnerable. Invasive species like buffelgrass have added dangerous fuel loads to desert landscapes, while rapid in-migration has pushed new development into fire-prone wildland-urban interface zones.

And now, more than 15% of properties in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is, are at risk of higher insurance costs or canceled policies because of rising wildfire risk, according to an analysis from First Street.

That nexus—of growing population, booming development, and the possibility of miscalculated risk—is exactly what insurers are hoping technology like that offered by Near Space can help them navigate.

Is the tech a gold mine or lifeline? It may be both

Aerial imagery has long been a tool for insurers looking to evaluate risk while reducing costs. It’s already being used to assess roof damage, wildfire and flood risk, storm impacts, and signs of deferred maintenance like overgrown trees.

But the quality, frequency, and cost-effectiveness of Near Space Labs’ technology arrives at a moment when both insurers and homeowners badly need relief. Since 2018, nearly 2 million home insurance policies have been nonrenewed or “dropped,” with some high-risk counties experiencing a threefold increase in nonrenewals, according to a Senate Budget Committee report.

That’s where Near Space Labs’ granularity may matter. Its imagery gives insurers a clearer, more current view of risk, which could help them price policies accurately enough to keep writing them in high-risk regions. And that, Matevosyan argues, ultimately benefits consumers, too.

“If we think about the next mortgage crisis, it's going to be because people can't afford insurance,” she says.

The industry, she argues, needs better real-time data to stabilize itself. “Insurance companies need to move from model risk to absorbed risk to be able to actually write policies in states like California, Florida, Texas, etc.”

Matevosyan acknowledges the skepticism from homeowners—especially those who’ve been dropped. But she pushes back on the idea that insurers want to pull out of states. “Insurance companies want to have the revenue and want to write policies, that's how they earn revenue,” she says.

The challenge is giving insurers the confidence to underwrite in places where the risk is shifting rapidly. High-frequency, high-resolution imagery may help them do exactly that, potentially keeping companies solvent—and keeping coverage available—to the people who need it most.

No rules, no warnings, no way to opt out—yet

Civil liberties advocates are less optimistic about the technology. They warn it has too few guardrails and too little oversight to protect homeowners from misuse.

Their concerns start with basic transparency: How detailed are these images? Will homeowners be notified when their property has been photographed? And what, if any, laws regulate private companies capturing data from the stratosphere?

Right now, the answer is almost none. There are no clear federal or state frameworks governing the use of aerial imagery for insurance purposes. And because the technology is deployed by private companies—not government agencies—it may fall outside the constitutional protections that traditionally govern surveillance.

As Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told The Mirror: “They may not implicate the same constitutional concerns. But as a policy matter, I think a lot of Americans would raise their eyebrows at what many would consider wide-area surveillance.”

Some states are beginning to push back. In California, lawmakers have introduced legislation to restrict or ban the use of aerial imagery by insurers unless homeowners receive clear, prior notice at least 30 days in advance.

Matevosyan sees that kind of transparency as a step in the right direction for the industry. “The future needs to be such that the consumer and the insurance company and the policymakers work together to mitigate the risk that we all face,” she says.

That could entail homeowners having equal access to the imagery, ensuring prompt identification of any issues—like that loose roof shingle. But for now, access to aerial imagery technology remains largely in the hands of insurers. Homeowners have little visibility into when, how, or why it’s being captured.

Which means the next time you look up, it might not be a bird or a plane. It might be your insurance company.