Joyce, a native New Yorker, didn’t think finding her first apartment on her own in the city would be easy. But he also didn’t think it would be “hell.” After looking at several small, overpriced properties that she described as “shitholes,” Joyce found her dream abode: an affordable studio in Manhattan.
“It was big and airy, and there was a fireplace,” she said. The kitchen was small but well equipped and looked like it had been recently renovated. She left everything to see this apartment, and when she got there, she heard that five other women, about the same age as her, were going to watch hers.
“I walk in, and it’s not an apartment at all,” he told me. It was much smaller than it looks in the pictures. The kitchen sink was different. The stove was missing several knobs. There was no fireplace. “There is a view of the apartment we saw in the pictures,” he said, and then there was the apartment itself. “My friend said we should have known it was AI because there was a plant in the gas stove in the picture.
New York City realtors have always had a knack for making even the wildest apartments look affordable in photos, but artificial intelligence has given them the ability to do so with the click of a button. For renters, this means spending more time looking at every listing to avoid ending up in an apartment that looks better online than it does in person.
Virtual programming is not new, but AI is. Bee, a Florida Realtor who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, said visual staging often helps people see how they can remodel or fix up a home. “You’d be surprised how little skill a buyer or tenant has,” she said. “Visual performances can be anywhere from, like, $40 to $400 based on what you’re doing with these stage players, and the actual stage won’t be done for less than a couple.”
He showed me a photo from one of his active listings, a furnished house he described as “vintage.” The living room had luxurious sofas, a luxurious wooden coffee table, a Persian style carpet and a heavy bed. Then he showed me how he redecorated it with ChatGPT. A white sofa, track lighting, and a plain, woven rug were considered modern. He said the edited photo doesn’t go on the list, but he shares it with customers to show how he can update the space.
Real estate agents and brokers have several staging tools at their disposal. Bee favorites are Stuccco and BoxBrownie, both of which charge per listing. But Bee said there’s a difference between using visual staging software to show what a house could look like with new furniture and a few DIY upgrades, and using AI tools to create a misleading list. “There is a case waiting to happen,” he said. “I think ‘digitally altered’ is not true. I don’t include ‘digitally altered’ when I have an AI to make a bed, but ‘digitally altered,’ to me, you say, ‘Bug me a hole.’
Madison, a Queens resident, said she wants to start looking at apartments before her lease ends in the fall. In her six years living in New York, she found houses through Facebook groups and, once, through postings on the queer dating app and classifieds Lex. This time, he turned to StreetEasy, where he saw an increase in AI-enhanced inventory.
“I think scam or misleading real estate photos have been around as long as online real estate listings have existed, but it’s worse now,” she said. While pre-AI real estate scams included pictures of completely different apartments, “now I look at a picture of a room that looks more or less realistic until you start looking at furniture details and things like that, where he takes a picture of the actual room and says, ‘Hey, ChatGPT, can you put some furniture in this for me?’
Some states are beginning to crack down on AI-enhanced listings. New York recently implemented a law mandating the disclosure of AI in advertisements, but the law focuses more on “artificial actors,” not AI-generated furniture. But New York’s secretary of state issued a warning last year about misleading AI-generated or AI-enhanced listings, noting that marketers are already prohibited from posting dishonest ads.
California’s recent Altered Image Law goes a step further, requiring anyone who advertises to disclose if they have used AI to alter or enhance images. But like seller and realtor laws, laws governing the use of AI in listings and other advertisements vary from state to state.
Joyce, who found a place to stay after months of searching, said even the descriptions seemed to be generated by AI. “Everything is ‘lovely.’ Everything is ‘cozy.’ You notice the same word patterns over and over again, where everything has spa-like finishes,’” she said. “Sellers are already dishonest, and now they have a fake machine in their pocket.”
