Real estate is entering the era of artificial intelligence
As you are hunting Via real estate listings for a new home in Franklin, Tennessee, you’ll come across a vertical video showing spacious rooms that feature a four-poster bed, a fully stocked wine cellar, and a soaking tub. In one corner of the video, a smiling real estate agent narrates walking into your dream home in a soothing tone. It looks great – maybe a little too perfect.
get Everything in the video is generated with artificial intelligence. The property is completely empty and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging. The real estate agent’s voice and expressions were born from text messages. Even the slow motion of the camera on each room was set up by artificial intelligence, as there were no real video cameras.
Any real estate agent can create the exact same thing at home, in minutes, says Alok Gupta, a former product manager at Facebook and a software engineer at Snapchat, who co-founded AutoReel. Between 500 and 1,000 new listing videos are created with AutoReel every day, he said, and realtors across the U.S. and as far away as New Zealand and India are using the technology to market thousands of properties.
It’s one of many AI tools, including more familiar ones like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, that are quickly changing the real estate industry into something that isn’t necessarily real.
“I’ve been at a few conferences in the last few weeks, and anecdotally, we ask 100 people in the audience how many are using AI, and I’d say 80 to 90 percent raise their hand,” says Dan Wiseman, director of innovation strategy at the National Association of Realtors, the largest real estate trade association. “We’re seeing this huge increase in people using it.”
Like many industries, the biggest names in the industry are rushing to embrace a wave of AI-powered products that make big promises to increase productivity, reduce costs, and revolutionize every aspect of the consumer experience. But when it comes to renting or buying a home, typically the most expensive parts of an adult’s life, using AI-generated photos, videos and listings can make the process even more dangerous.
Elizabeth, a rural Michigan homeowner who did not want her last name used due to privacy concerns, monitors local real estate listings to find out what her home is worth.
