Joyce, who grew up in New York, knew that landing her first apartment alone in the city would be a challenge. What she didn’t expect was for the search to feel like “hell.” After touring a string of cramped, overpriced units she bluntly called “shitholes,” she finally spotted what looked like the perfect place: an affordable Manhattan studio.
“It was big and airy, and there was a fireplace,” she said. The kitchen, though compact, appeared functional and recently updated. Joyce rearranged her schedule to see it right away, only to discover when she arrived that five other women around her age were lined up for viewings after her.
“I get in, and it’s not the same apartment at all,” she told me. The studio was far smaller than the photos suggested. The kitchen sink didn’t match. Several stove knobs were gone. The fireplace had vanished entirely. “There’s the idea of the apartment that we saw in the pictures,” she said, and then there was the reality in front of her. “My friend said we should’ve known it was AI because there was a plant on the gas stove in the picture.”
New York City brokers have long been skilled at photographing even battered rentals in their best possible light. But generative AI has made that polish easier — and faster — than ever. For renters, it adds another layer of due diligence, forcing them to study listings even more carefully to avoid wasting time on apartments that look dramatically better online than they do in person.
Virtual staging has existed for years, but AI has changed the speed and accessibility of the practice. Bee, a Florida Realtor who asked to keep her last name private, said digital staging can help buyers and renters imagine how a home might look with new furniture or renovations. “You’d be surprised how little creativity a buyer or renter has,” she said. “Virtual staging could be anywhere from, like, $40 to $400 based on what you’re having these stagers do, whereas real-life staging can’t be done for under a couple grand.”
Bee pulled up a photo from one of her current listings, a home furnished in a style she described as “dated.” The living room featured overstuffed sofas, an ornate wooden coffee table, a Persian-style rug, and thick drapes. Then she showed me a version she had reimagined using ChatGPT: a white sofa, track lighting, and a simple woven rug gave the room a much more contemporary feel. She said the edited image would not appear in the public listing, but she shares it with clients to illustrate the space’s potential.
Agents and brokers now have a growing menu of virtual staging platforms to choose from. Bee said she prefers Stuccco and BoxBrownie, both of which charge by listing. Still, she draws a line between using software to show how a home might look with different furnishings and minor upgrades, and using AI to produce deceptive marketing images. “There’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” she said. “I think ‘digitally altered’ is not accurate. I don’t necessarily put ‘digitally altered’ if I have AI make a bed, but ‘digitally altered,’ to me, says, ‘I patched a hole.’”
Madison, who lives in Queens, said she began apartment hunting early ahead of her lease ending in the fall. Over six years in New York, she has found places through Facebook groups and, once, via a post on Lex, the queer dating and classifieds app. This time, she has been browsing StreetEasy — and says she has noticed a sharp rise in listings that appear to be enhanced with AI.
“I think scammy or misleading pictures for apartments have existed for as long as internet listings for apartments have, but it’s really egregious now,” she said. Whereas pre-AI real estate scams included photos of totally different apartments, “now I’m looking at a picture of a room that more or less looks real until you start looking at the details of the furniture and things like that, where they clearly took a picture of the actual room and said, ‘Hey, ChatGPT, can you put some furniture in this for me?’”
Some states are starting to crack down on AI-enhanced listings. New York recently implemented a law mandating disclosure of AI in ads, but the legislation mostly focuses on “synthetic performers,” not on AI-generated furniture. But the New York secretary of state did issue a warning last year about misleading AI-generated or AI-enhanced listings, noting that brokers are already prohibited from posting dishonest advertisements.
California’s recent Altered Image Law goes a step further, requiring anyone advertising property to disclose when they’ve used AI to alter or enhance images. But much like broker and Realtor regulations, laws governing the use of AI in listings and other advertisements vary from state to state.
Joyce, who found an apartment after searching for several months, said that even the descriptions appear to be AI-generated. “Everything is ‘charming.’ Everything is ‘cozy.’ You notice the same wording patterns over and over again, where everything has ‘spa-like finishes,’” she said. “Brokers are already so dishonest, and now they have, like, the lying machine in their pocket.”
