Real estate is entering the era of artificial intelligence

As I was fishing Through real estate listings for a new home in Franklin, Tennessee, find a vertical video showing spacious rooms featuring a four-poster bed, a fully equipped wine cellar, and a deep soaking tub. In the corner of the video, a smiling real estate agent recounts your steps into your dream home in a soothing tone. It sounds perfect, maybe a little too perfect.

hunting? Everything in the video is generated by artificial intelligence. The properties are completely empty, and the luxurious furniture is the product of a virtual stage show. Realtor voiceovers and expressions are born from text prompts. Even the slow motion of the camera over each room is orchestrated by AI, because there was no actual video camera.

Any real estate agent can create “exactly that, in the home, in minutes,” says Alok Gupta, a former product manager at Facebook and a software engineer at Snapchat, who co-founded AutoReel, an app that allows realtors to turn photos from their property listings into videos. Between 500 and 1,000 new listing videos are created with AutoReel every day, he said, with realtors across the U.S. and even in New Zealand and India using the technology to market thousands of properties.

This is one of many AI tools, including familiar ones like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, that are rapidly reshaping the real estate industry into something that isn’t necessarily real.

“I’ve been to a few conferences over the past few weeks, and anecdotally, out of 100 people in the audience we’ll ask how many people are using AI, and I’d say 80 to 90 percent of people raise their hand,” says Dan Weissman, director of innovation strategy at the National Association of Realtors, the largest real estate trade association in the United States. “We’re seeing this huge uptick in the number of people using it.”

Like most industries, the biggest names in the industry are rushing to embrace a wave of generative AI products that make big promises about increasing productivity, cutting costs, and revolutionizing every aspect of the consumer experience. But when it comes to renting or buying a home, which are typically the most expensive parts of an adult’s life, the use of photos, videos and AI-generated listing descriptions can make the process riskier.

Elizabeth, a homeowner in rural Michigan who didn’t want her last name used because of privacy concerns, monitors local real estate listings to stay on top of her home’s value.