Apps like AutoReel allow landlords and real estate agents to upgrade homes quickly and for free. The legal void is raising more and more complaints from tenants and buyers who feel deceived when they see the house in real life.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming the real estate market, with landlords and agents generating ads with narration, virtual furniture and panoramic videos — all things that don’t actually exist.
Apps like AutoReel can turn still photos of empty rooms into elaborate videos in just minutes. The platform, used by brokers in the USA, New Zealand and India, produces between 500 and 1000 new videos of ads per day.
This technology, however, is raising concerns about transparency and consumer deception. Some buyers discovered that properties they didn’t look anything like with AI-enhanced ads.
Elizabeth, a homeowner in Michigan, noticed strange inconsistencies, like “stairs that go nowhere” and “cartoonish” lighting, when browsing properties in her area. After comparing two listings for the same house, he discovered that the AI-edited images had removed kitchen cabinetschanged windows and replaced the floor with grass. Its publication attracted thousands of reactions and accusations of false advertising.
Similar incidents have cropped up across the country, from a Manhattan apartment apparently turned into a luxury loft to a Detroit home that received a “new” roof digitally. The National Association of Real Estate Agents (NAR) warned that the legal status of AI images remains “nebulous” and that their use must be clearly disclosed, just like traditional virtual decoration. Violations can result in fines or prosecution for misleading advertising, refers to .
Despite these ethical concerns, industry leaders argue that AI’s efficiency is too powerful to ignore. “Why pay $500 for virtual decoration when I can do it for free in 45 seconds?”, asks Jason Haber, co-founder of the American Association of Real Estate Agents. However, Haber warns that excessive dependence on AI makes agents “indistinguishable” from each other, stressing that professionalism and creativity should not be externalized to machines.
Even AI developers admit that their systems are not perfect. AutoReel has been trained to avoid creating fake features, but occasional “hallucinations” like ghost furniture still appear.
Critics like real estate photographer Nathan Cool warn that while AI videos may captivate online audiences, home buyers, who are making the biggest investment of their lives, “They don’t want to be deceived before they even arrive at the property”.
