Real Estate Is Entering Its AI Slop Era 63
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: As you're hunting through real estate listings for a new home in Franklin, Tennessee, you come across a vertical video showing off expansive rooms featuring a four-poster bed, a fully stocked wine cellar, and a soaking tub. In the corner of the video, a smiling real estate agent narrates the walk-through of your dream home in a soothing tone. It looks perfect -- maybe a little too perfect. The catch? Everything in the video isAI-generated. The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging. The realtor's voice-over and expressions were born from text prompts. Even the camera's slow pan over each room is orchestrated by AI, because there was no actual video camera involved.
Any real estate agent can create "exactly that, at home, in minutes," says Alok Gupta, a former product manager at Facebook and software engineer at Snapchat who cofounded AutoReel, an app that allows realtors to turn images from their property listings into videos. He said that between 500 and 1,000 new listing videos are being created with AutoReel every day, with realtors across the US and even in New Zealand and India using the technology to market thousands of properties. This is one of many AI tools, including more familiar ones like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, that are quickly reshaping the real estate industry into something that isn't necessarily, well, real. "People that want to buy a house, they're going to make the largest investment of their lifetime," said Nathan Cool, a real estate photographer who runs an educational YouTube channel. "They don't want to be fooled before they ever arrive."
Any real estate agent can create "exactly that, at home, in minutes," says Alok Gupta, a former product manager at Facebook and software engineer at Snapchat who cofounded AutoReel, an app that allows realtors to turn images from their property listings into videos. He said that between 500 and 1,000 new listing videos are being created with AutoReel every day, with realtors across the US and even in New Zealand and India using the technology to market thousands of properties. This is one of many AI tools, including more familiar ones like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, that are quickly reshaping the real estate industry into something that isn't necessarily, well, real. "People that want to buy a house, they're going to make the largest investment of their lifetime," said Nathan Cool, a real estate photographer who runs an educational YouTube channel. "They don't want to be fooled before they ever arrive."
Renter mentality (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Renter mentality (Score:1)
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Own your own property and you don't have to worry about any of this, at all.
ROI is too low. Better to invest that money elsewhere. And real estate is overpriced as it is.
That's not bad advice, but it's a bit simplistic, especially if you already have a mortgage. A better answer is: it depends. Mainly on the mortgage interest rate, remaining balance and how long you're planning on living there. Paying it off early saves on the interest allows investing what would be future mortgage P&I payments elsewhere. You're also free to control the insurance parameters, rather then what the lender requires. If you're planning on staying in the house, paying it off early reduce
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Re: Renter mentality (Score:2)
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Re: Renter mentality (Score:2)
Re:Renter mentality (Score:4, Interesting)
I just bought a house in March. Any listing where the home was already vacated (95% in my case) the listing was AI-augmented with furniture that would not exist when I went to tour the home.
This has nothing to do w/renting; it's everywhere.
Re: Renter mentality (Score:2)
Do you think you were a victim of fraud? Or did you understand what was going on?
Hard to Say (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think you were a victim of fraud? Or did you understand what was going on?
Half the time when you come across a picture of a room with digital furniture, the very next one is the unaltered, empty-room picture. So if this tech is intended to deceive, most realtors haven't gotten the memo.
Far worse are the fake external shots where the house is surrounded by an acre of grass or woods, when in reality it's packed like sardines with the other houses.
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If I were a realtor, I would have a virtual tour of the house showing the empty rooms. Then, if the customer wanted, I could also show the space with AI augmented furniture showing two or three decoration ideas. That nook under the stairs? Show it as a storage area, a study area, a small pantry, a pet station, a home automation rack, etc. The master bathroom? Show it with modern, classic, retro, painted, wallpaper, window treatments, etc. Same with other rooms that might be in the house: den, dinette
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...and you would lose business. Give them both choices, but show the staged version by default. And, a buyer agent will soon enough be informing their clients that all these videos are suspect, and an in-person inspection is essential. Even a remote buyer can engage an agent to drag them through the home with their phone recording.
Caveat Emptor. Always.
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a buyer agent will soon enough be informing their clients that all these videos are suspect, and an in-person inspection is essential
Was that not already the case in a pre-AI world? Who's buying a house sight unseen based on listing photos/videos?
Re: Renter mentality (Score:2)
If your Realtor, as a buyer agent, were diligent and ethical, yes.
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It's not new either. When you buy food the packaging often shows a "serving suggestion" that bares little resemblance to what comes out of the container.
In this case it is a downgrade in the listing. While it looks nicer than empty rooms, it obscures details you want to see. Likely combined with the agent trying to hurry you around the property so you don't notice all the defects that the AI covered up.
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Did you actually expect the house to come with furniture, without an explicit statement that it's furnished?
What if the previous owner hadn't left yet, and the pictures were of the previous owner's furniture - would you have just presumed that you get their furniture?
I don't see any issue with this. Real estate agents used to virtually insert furniture via non-AI means. Here you're just going to be having an AI model that generates a depth map from the existing space and is then allowed to imagine in what
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I didn't say I had a problem with it; I was just stating that it's very commonplace and it has nothing to do with 'renter's mentality' as it happened when purchasing a home (this is the 4th home I've purchased in my lifetime).
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I had a family member sell a vacant home and they hired a service to come in and stage the place. They brought in furniture, artwork, and little knick-knacks that make the home feel not-empty. Turns out buyers benefit from a little bit of help visualizing how the space feels and how it might look when lived in.
Barring scenarios like an agent manipulating the photos to make the space look bigger (which they've been doing forever with fisheye lenses...) this just feels like a more cost effective way to ac
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Own your own property and you don't have to worry about any of this, at all.
Your solution to fraud is "don't want or need whatever the fraudsters are lying about"? That's supremely unhelpful.
Re: Renter mentality (Score:1)
Will you pay my down payment? I did all the right things according to slashdot but my credit score is still only in the low 700s, so it's not enough to access first time home buyers assistance.
Re: Renter mentality (Score:2)
Oh look downmodded, I guess the answer is no.
Some dumb fuck on here always wants to tell you how to solve your problems in ways that won't work.
Serving suggestion? (Score:4, Funny)
Have food companies been using AI all these years when they put bluberries on top of cornflakes on the box but none in the box?
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haha yes - the 'serving suggestion' disclaimer.
in this application may I suggest 'living suggestion', or even 'house suggestion'?
Re: Serving suggestion? (Score:2)
Worse, they were using NI.
Vertical video (Score:1, Informative)
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If only there were a noun form of the adjective "female" used when applied to a human. Maybe something beginning with the word "w", I dunno.
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** letter. SIGH.
Video (Score:4, Insightful)
The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging.
I... don't care? I'm going to look at the house in person anyways. If they aren't staging it in real life, it isn't going to look great. It's nice seeing how it might look on a video, but that's not how anyone is going to make their final decision.
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Re:Video (Score:5, Informative)
My concern is the opportunity to lie.
An empty room is tough to gauge the size of (even in person).
A staged room, with a bed and dresser gives you a better idea of how spacious or not spacious the room is, and how you might furnish it. This is valuable information when forming an opinion about the house and its suitability.
Realtor photos already have a fisheye problem with a lot of the pictures and video as they trying to show more of the room at once which causes scale to be tough to determine.
Add AI staging to that and it is even more problematic, because they can stage it with furniture that isn't scaled correctly. I've seen some AI staging where things are just scaled wrong, like the bedroom dresser is only 4" deep, and couches are sunk into walls. But its not obvious to look at it. Or there's two cars in the garage but they're 15% smaller than they'd actually be so it looks more spacious. OR there's two large couches with a large coffee table between them with a fireplace off to the side, and room to walk around it all and then you realize that either the fireplace is 8 feet high and 12 feet wide and the ceilings are 25' high ... or the furniture is scaled to 25% actual size.
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When they do show homes for new build estates, they fill them with extra small furniture. A short bed that your feet overhang, a child size toilet, mini appliances. And even then they look cramped.
I'm sure the AI is tuned to do the same, to exaggerate the space.
AI (Score:2)
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If this plays out true to form, expect that soon enough sellers will require earnest money before a tour or inspection. And those sellers may be the bleeding edge of a failed trend. Buyers always rule the market, ALWAYS, though sellers are reassured that pricing will dictate the market in the end. And it does. Supply influences, but as we see in the US, supply, financing, and the 'economy', ie demand, drive pricing trends.
My wife has begin skipping over videos on the Internet, declaring them all 'AI', and s
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That's a chance. What is giving you the better impression? A photo of a empty room, or a photo of an empty room with your furniture in it? Current AI is able to take a photo of your living room and an empty room and put your specific furniture into the empty room. Of course it's not real, but it gives a first impression.
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The real property is completely empty, and the luxury furniture is a product of virtual staging.
I... don't care? I'm going to look at the house in person anyways. If they aren't staging it in real life, it isn't going to look great. It's nice seeing how it might look on a video, but that's not how anyone is going to make their final decision.
I have a friend who recently sold their house and the agent staged it by having them take out about 80% of the furniture (and into storage) to make the house look even bigger. What remained wasn't really practical for actual living, but I guess it offered enough for the imagination. I had never seen the house look so bare.
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I have a friend who recently sold their house and the agent staged it by having them take out about 80% of the furniture (and into storage) to make the house look even bigger. What remained wasn't really practical for actual living, but I guess it offered enough for the imagination. I had never seen the house look so bare.
That seems a bit extreme, but pulling furniture out is pretty common. When we sold our last house we took out maybe 40% of the furniture, which wasn't really a lot as we didn't have much. An extra chair in the living room, a table in the kitchen, the sideboard in the dining room. A hard purge on the toys the kids didn't play with any more Just enough to open up the rooms a bit. 80% sounds like a living room with a couch and a TV, and nothing else.
It does make a difference. We had a house tour of a couple w
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Beyond just furniture... (Score:4, Interesting)
I discovered a listing for a vacant lot where they had used AI to show what the lot would like if you were to build a house on it. The listing helpfully stated "House not included".
No idea if the house they showed would have met zoning requirements in the area, and I doubt the listing agent did either.
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If I could afford to move out of my momâ(TM)s (Score:1)
Welcome to the Future.. (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure we won't be able to avoid this in the next few years.
Glad I'll never be in the market for a home and that I have at least one realtor I trust available to me.
Re: Welcome to the Future.. (Score:2)
Lawsuit waiting to happen (Score:1)
AI being used by realtors to make the property look more attractive and in better condition than it really is will eventually result in lawsuits and/or professional complaints to the licensure boards that license real estate brokers.
It's one thing to use tight camera shots, fancy lighting, and etc. to make spaces appear bigger but it's another thing to use AI to fake footage and cover up defects. It will eventually make a material misrepresentation that leads to financial and professional consequences.
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It will eventually make a material misrepresentation that leads to financial and professional consequences.
There will be a disclaimer on the listing that "all care taken, no responsibility" when it comes to description. Plus, for any purchase of consequence you should be checking prior, whether in person or by proxy, to ensure what was represented in the listing is what you're going to get.
Where I live, if you buy at auction it's 'you get what you get' and it's up to you to be happy with what you're bidding on. Go through a normal contract to purchase though, and you have some limited recourse that you are gett
It's one thing to stage furniture... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think anyone assumes a house is furnished unless the listing explicitly states it's furnished. That isn't really scummy. That's just making it easier for you to see yourself in the house. What is scummy, though, are the listings where they use their little AI tool to materially alter the appearance of the run down crackhouse they bought at a state tax sale for $378 and flipping it completely untouched for $750,000 hoping you're one of those foreign investors that just wants to buy up some real estate in your country's future colony.
That's not slop. (Score:3)
I'll agree that it's fiction created by an AI (probably), but not that it's what it meant by slop. Not unless it's very carelessly done.
What it *is* is AI generated deceptive advertising.
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AI software that i am looking for (Score:2)
Given many views inside a house, such as all the frames of a walk around video, i want software that can build a set of images of each wall, floor, and ceiling, in that house. Then i want software that can produce new views inside, at new designated angles that were not previously shot. If the input is fully complete, then the output should be, as well. most of the AI would be in scanning the input image frames to "understand" how each frame is shot. I have done this before, manually, a couple times, an
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I think you're looking for NeRF (neural radiance fields), which can reconstruct a full 3D scene from photos.
One of the weirdest things (Score:2)
the undercurrent (Score:2)
The undercurrent of all the AI Slop is that you cannot trust anything digital any longer, especially if it comes from one source. Even then, you cannot be sure the rest of the things you check are not simply repeating that one source.
I don't get it (Score:2)
Previously the real estate sharks RENTED that furniture, paid an interior designer to make the location look as good as possible, hired professional camera and editing people, using small furniture and wide lenses to make it look bigger etc.
These people have now been replaced by AI, like thousands of other jobs.
THAT'S ALL!