At first, the idea of using AI to create real-estate-listing pictures seemed like a decent proposition to Kati Spaniak, an Illinois-based agent. Like anyone who works on commission, real-estate agents are under tremendous pressure to reduce overhead costs, and a tool that produces images of a furnished home'without an agent having to actually furnish it'could save thousands of dollars. More and more brokers seem to have the same idea: A recent survey of Realtors found that nearly 70 percent of the participants had used AI. Spaniak thought she had the ideal candidate for trying out the tech: a house in a suburb north of Chicago that had tremendous appeal on paper but looked terrible in photos when it was empty. 'The house really needed quite a bit of work,' she told me. So she ordered some 'virtually staged' photos that used AI to add furniture, wall hangings, and stacks of coffee-table books. But when potential buyers began showing up, Spaniak noticed a problem. Visitors seemed...
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