At first, the idea of using AI to create real-estate-listing pictures seemed like a decent proposition to Kati Spaniak, an Illinois-based agent. Like anyone who works on commission, real-estate agents are under tremendous pressure to reduce overhead costs, and a tool that produces images of a furnished home—without an agent having to actually furnish it—could save thousands of dollars. More and more brokers seem to have the same idea: A recent survey of Realtors found that nearly 70 percent of the participants had used AI.
Spaniak thought she had the ideal candidate for trying out the tech: a house in a suburb north of Chicago that had tremendous appeal on paper but looked terrible in photos when it was empty. “The house really needed quite a bit of work,” she told me. So she ordered some “virtually staged” photos that used AI to add furniture, wall hangings, and stacks of coffee-table books. But when potential buyers began showing up, Spaniak noticed a problem. Visitors seemed disappointed, even disoriented. “They don’t even really recognize why they’re upset,” she said. “They just feel let down.”
For homeseekers, the rise of the AI-assisted listing is not necessarily catastrophic. Fake imagery in home sales are like heavily edited photos on a dating profile—people are going to realize they’ve been fooled as soon as they walk in the door. And a level of manipulation has long been baked into real estate: wide-angle lenses to make spaces
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