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How Artificial Intelligence is Poinsed to Recharge Realtors® and Reinvent Real Estate
The Robots Are Coming
Whether we’re ready or not, the robots are coming. Hollywood has long been enamored with putting robots, artificial intelligence (AI), and sentient machines up on the big screen. The Matrix, The Terminator, and 2001: A Space Odyssey gave us some of the most memorable and chilling machines in movie history. A theme emerges in most of these cinematic depictions: the robots are the bad guys and they’re bent on our destruction.

This so-called “Singularity”—where AI gets a mind of its own—is largely the stuff of science fiction. But in the real world, many of us have heard concerning messages from tech leaders warning that AI is advancing too fast for us to fully comprehend or control. Other computer scientists have stepped in to caution that mythologizing AI isn’t helpful, and that it’s best to think of this reality-bending technology for what it really is: a human tool designed to enhance productivity and make life easier.

Generative AIs—like OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and Dall-E 2 subscription-based offerings—are the kind of machine-learning technologies that have skyrocketed in popularity over the past year, raking in many millions of subscribers almost overnight. And these systems keep improving with each iteration; getting better at transmitting language prompts into text, image, video, audio and other mediums. The rapid evolution of these machines stirs up the question on many of our minds: As AI becomes more sophisticated, what’s stopping it from taking our jobs? For a Realtor® that question might be: Will my clients replace me with a hyper-intelligent chatbot?

Virtual Realty

Before speculating on what AI might do to us, let’s look at what it can do for us. Experts across the real estate industry agree that the last thing you should do is dismiss or ignore artificial intelligence, even if its long-term future is unwritten. But if you’re feeling uncertain about how to approach it, you’re not alone. It’s only human to be skeptical about disruptive new technologies, which often start out looking like toys, said the National Association of Realtors’® (NAR) Director of Emerging Technology David Conroy during a recent presentation on AI and real estate. “People often fail to anticipate how rapidly [tech] will improve.” Consider how quickly mobile devices went from wireless telephones to powerful handheld computers real estate agents couldn’t do business without.
 
In many ways, technology has already transformed the real estate industry and reshaped how consumers think about finding, buying, listing, and selling homes. Think about virtual showings, Zoom meetings, the user-friendly digital MLS experience, digital forms, text-messaging clients, iBuyer
startups, and so much more. Agents who are early adopters of emerging technologies tend to be one step ahead in the industry.

Content Creation

What are some practical ways you can leverage generative AI—like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 systems—to improve your business and lighten your workload? In real estate, it’s poised to help agents blow past the busywork and focus on serving consumers in deeper ways. And what agent doesn’t wish they had more calendar space for these meaningful and lead-generating connections? “The latest generation of AI technologies will have a significant impact on the real estate industry, improving efficiency, enhancing customer experience, and enabling better decision-making,” says Conroy. AIs can help agents create a variety of business content including blogs or blog outlines, flyers, weekly emails, social media captions and graphics, stock photos for marketing, headshot edits, and renovation previews.

“AIs can help real estate agents create a variety of business content including blogs or blog outlines, flyers, weekly emails, social media captions and graphics, stock photos for marketing, headshot edits, and renovation previews.”

Text-to-Image

Let’s take real estate images as an example. Professional looking images are an important part of many agents’ marketing strategies. But using existing homes or stock photography in advertising can put agents at risk of violating certain copyright laws. AIs can help agents avoid liability by generating unique and creative images to replace stock photos. The subscription-
based Dall-E 2 system is a text-to-image tool that creates realistic images from a prompt. For a small fee, Dall-E 2 will provide you with hundreds of images composed like a digital jigsaw puzzle from pieces across the web. Of course, it’s how the machine interprets the language used in a prompt that can still cause some headaches, even if these systems are improving as we speak. A word change here or there might cause Dall-E 2
to render an image that doesn’t fit or is distorted. While many images look realistic on a mobile phone screen, a closer inspection can reveal inconsistencies in the composition, such as skewed landscaping angles, uneven home construction, and shadows that defy the laws of physics. But as these images become more realistic over time, showing renovation or landscaping possibilities to consumers is a growing trend that could provide incredible value.

Text-to-Text
When it comes to text, you can try out ChatGPT or use Google’s free Bard system to quickly generate content and ideas that would have previously taken hours to devise, outline, and draft. But as we found with text-to-image prompts, you can’t just say the magic word and get ideal results. “Think of [chatbots] as a muse—a source of inspiration,” says David Conry. For instance, if you ask ChatGPT to write up a weekly market update email for your contacts, you’ll have to do some editing. Your response might also be riddled with cliches that you’ll need to edit in your own style to make the writing feel more authentic. And if you use these systems as research assistants, inquiring about housing market data or trends, don’t skip the fact-checking. If you’re using prompts to write listing descriptions, pay close attention to how the AI describes a home’s neighborhood and community, or you could risk violating fair housing law. “The computer made me do it,” isn’t a statement that will hold up in court. However, with proper editing, ChatGPT can free up hours of your schedule by generating listing descriptions, emails and other text-based communications. Take a look at our sidebar to see an example of using ChatGPT to create a unique listing description.

To Err is Human, To Not...AI?
While AI can act as a helpful assistant, muse, or research aid—it won’t replace human relationships, which are at the heart of all successful real estate transactions. The ability to ethically and expertly guide buyers and sellers through some of the biggest financial decisions of their lives is what sets Realtors® apart from not only computers, but other competitors. There are many upsides to leveraging AI to improve your business, but these tools are far from perfect and should be approached with a critical eye—which means considering potential problems AI might cause within the real estate industry. Experts seem to agree that the most critical concerns right now revolve around cyber security and consumer data protection; something agents and brokers must pay close attention to as these technologies evolve. AI systems can be used to generate misinformation and generally blur the line between fact and fiction, including creating fake reviews, testimonials and property listings.

Powerful AIs could cross ethical or legal lines, either by misinterpreting human prompts or as guided by bad-faith actors. Related to cyber security, NAR points to the potential for AIs being manipulated to send automated scams that trick sellers or buyers into giving out personal or financial information. Think of these as much more sophisticated versions of the phony mortgage payment letters that target homeowners. Trained AI chatbots could be used to convincingly impersonate real estate professionals on the web, also targeting consumer financial data. AI’s ability to falsify real estate contracts, and create fake deeds, titles, or other legal documents is another area of growing concern across the industry.

The gap between real and fabricated digital content will almost certainly close across most aspects of modern life. How will we know whether a person or a computer wrote a certain story, and who will get the credit? If we told you this article was written using AI, would that make you trust it (or us) less? These existential questions will remain with us in perpetuity as AI advances. Real or imagined, it’s imperative for real estate professionals to do their part in educating consumers on the risks of AI related to buying or selling a home, which means staying on top of trends. Helping consumers identify technology risks will become a key competency for the real estate agent of the not-so-distant future. By becoming tech experts on topics like AI and smart devices, agents can further prove their value to customers and leads while enhancing their own businesses.