Real Estate Agents Are Using AI Images Instead of Actual Photos
House hunters have begun to notice that real estate listings increasingly contain AI images and are calling them misleading.
DeAnn Wiley shared an outrageous AI picture on X (formerly Twitter) of a house in Detroit listed on Zillow that shows a picturesque home that looks nothing like the photo of the house it’s supposed to be Google Maps.
“So I’m noticing, as I look at houses to rent, that landlords are using AI to stage the pictures but the AI is also cleaning up the walls, paint, windows and stuff in the process so when you go look in person it looks way more worn and torn than the pics would show,” Wiley writes on X.
Wired published an article about this phenomenon and spoke to Elizabeth from Michigan who regularly scrolls real estate listings and has been noticing pictures that don’t make sense. “There were stairways leading to nowhere,” Elizabeth tells the tech publication. “This is misleading. It’s distorting the features of the house.” She shared some of the images on Reddit.
A local realtor has started posting AI altered houses for sale
byu/hashtagitslit inmildlyinfuriating
Another Redditor spotted a New York City apartment listing on StreetEasy in which an AI image was slipped in, making the bedroom look far bigger than the tiny loft it is located in.
So burnt out from StreetEasy I almost didn’t notice…
byu/seacrow123 inNYCapartments
Although this could be viewed as inappropriate, one realtor tells Wired that he is not concerned. “Why would I send my photos of an empty room to a virtual stager, have them spend four days and send it back to me at a charge of 500 bucks when I can just do it in ChatGPT for free in 45 seconds?” says Jason Haber. “We’ve done virtual renderings for 20 years, so the fact that you can just do it now on AI, there was a whole cottage industry of virtual renderings and those people are now looking for a new job.”
There are rules in place for real estate listings: the National Association of Realtors specifically prohibits the use of misleading images. But with AI firms, such as AutoReel, that specialize in taking images from property listings and turning them into AI video, this trend will likely continue.
If you are a real estate photographer being affected by AI, we’d love to hear from you: get in touch via the tip line.
