Real estate sites are filling up with glaringly AI-altered images that dress up run-down properties as being in much better shape than they actually are.
Landlords are using AI to populate rooms with nonexistent furniture, move walls around, dream up imaginary facades, rooflines, and landscaping, and brighten up rooms that are in reality devoid of sunlight.
Case in point, a Zillow listing recently identified by children’s book illustrator DeAnn Wiley, recently interviewed by Slate, shows an AI-yassified facade of a rental property in Detroit, Michigan that’s smoothed over to a comical degree. It was an astonishing makeover: rooms didn’t show the grime the house had accumulated over the decades, thanks to an AI repainting the walls or refinishing floors.
And as Wired reports, some AI companies are taking the trend even further. One firm called AutoReel, founded by a former Facebook product manager named Alok Gupta, turns static images of properties into short video clips, selling renters or buyers on a reality that arguably doesn’t exist.
National Association of Realtors director of innovation strategy Dan Weisman told Wired that he observed a “huge uptick in people” using AI.
“I’ve been at a few conferences over the past few weeks, and just anecdotally speaking, we’ll ask out of 100 people in the audience how many are using AI, and I’d say 80 to 90 percent of people raise their hand,” he said.
“When we started this two years ago, we kind of got a no from customers,” Gupta added. “In 2024, they started saying ‘tell us more.’ And then this year, they’ve been asking, ‘How do I get started?’”
Despite rising concerns among people looking for housing that they’re being sold on a fantasy, landlords and real estate professionals remain happy to cut costs with the help of AI.
Gupta told Wired that people could save anywhere from “$500 to $1,000” by foregoing the need to hire a videographer. Others were even more blunt.
“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?” American Real Estate Association founder Jason Haber told the publication.
Meanwhile, buyers are cursed with the task of distinguishing between an AI-rendered dream and a far messier reality.
And experts recommend they keep their guard up for the foreseeable future.
“The bigger risk isn’t full fabrication; it’s subtle manipulation,” real estate solutions company Cotality general manager Kevin Greene told Slate. “Tools that can brighten a photo can also remove power lines, add trees, or replace grass with a pool — and that’s where things start to cross the line.”
“What matters most is whether that content reflects ‘ground truth data,’ which means the verified, factual attributes of a property drawn from public records, imagery, and on-site validation,” he added.
At best, buyers waste their time finding out for themselves that they’ve been misled by AI imagery. At worst, in case they decide to buy a property sight unseen, Carnegie Mellon University associate professor Derek Leben told Slate that they could make a “case that they made that contract under misleading pretenses and for it to be null and void.”
To Wiley, the artist who spotted the yassified house on Zillow, the onus shouldn’t fall on those looking for housing.
“The focus shouldn’t be on renters to have discernment but on these rental apps to regulate their platform so that users can avoid potential scams or manipulation during their search,” she told Slate.
More on AI real estate: This Listing for a Rental House Is Mangled With AI So Badly That You’ll Cackle Out Loud
