The ground is shifting under home inspectors, and the real threat isn’t a gadget—it’s losing control of our craft and our clients’ trust. We open up about a clear pledge to never sell client data and why that line in the sand matters more than ever as AI-driven tools flood the market with promises of speed and convenience.

Across the conversation, we map a simple but urgent framework: embrace innovation without surrendering judgment. We revisit the cautionary tale of the Luddites to show how industries collapse when craftsmen are replaced rather than equipped. Then we look at how accountants got it right—using powerful automation daily while staying the gatekeepers who catch costly errors and explain the nuance software misses. For inspectors, that means using AI for comment cleanup, consistency, and clarity, while resisting products that train on proprietary reports or market “DIY inspections” to consumers. When software is free because your clients pay with their data, the conflicts of interest are hidden but real.

We also get practical. Learn how to spot red flags in privacy policies, what questions to ask your software provider about third-party data sharing, and how to set expectations with agents and buyers about the difference between a polished auto-report and a true inspection rooted in field experience. We share why our own tools integrate AI in a privacy-first way, isolating models so your work doesn’t train competing systems, and how to communicate your data ethics with a public badge that earns trust before you arrive on site.

If you care about protecting the value of your license, your reputation, and your clients’ privacy, this is a roadmap to keep the human at the center while putting better tools in your hands. Subscribe, share with a fellow inspector, and leave a review with your take: where do you draw the line between helpful automation and harmful replacement?

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*The views and opinions expressed in this podcast, and the guests on it, do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Inspector Toolbelt and its associates.