Real Estate Is Entering Its AI Slop Era (www.wired.com)

Real estate marketing is rapidly adopting generative AI to create polished listing videos and images that never actually existed. Tools like AutoReel let agents turn static photos into vertical walkthrough videos with AI-generated furniture, virtual staging, synthesized voice-overs and simulated camera pans — AutoReel reports 500–1,000 new listing videos made daily worldwide. These systems are trained on millions of property videos and fine-tuned to reduce obvious fabrication, but hallucinations persist: yellowish color casts, impossible stairways, missing cabinets, resized windows, or even phantom couches have appeared in real listings. Social backlash has already sprung up as buyers spot altered photos and repost comparisons online. The shift matters because it accelerates cost and time savings for brokers (claims of $500–$1,000 and weeks saved), boosts social-media-ready content, and could displace parts of the virtual-rendering ecosystem. But it raises consequential ethical, legal and market risks: misleading depictions can violate disclosure rules and consumer-protection laws, undermine buyer trust, and make high-stakes transactions riskier. Industry groups urge disclosure, and practitioners warn against lazy, cut-and-paste AI copy (the telltale “nestled” is cited as a giveaway). Technically promising but imperfect, these tools force a balance between productivity gains and robust guardrails for accuracy, transparency and liability.