Residential real estate’s AI honeymoon is over 

Editor's note: As AI becomes increasingly embedded in real estate tools, transactions and processes, industry leaders are grappling with how to balance the benefits and risks of the technology. In this two-part series, we look at how some brokerages, MLSs and consumer advocates are approaching AI, and the questions the industry should be asking.

Artificial intelligence is no longer residential real estate's shiny new toy — it has become an indispensable tool for many agents' businesses. From writing listing descriptions and drafting marketing emails to polishing social posts and enhancing listing photos, AI is now ubiquitous.

That flood of AI-generated marketing — LinkedIn posts that read eerily similar, doctored listing photos and videos with a flat, uncanny-sounding voice — has sparked a new buzzword inside and outside the industry: AI slop.

But for brokers and consumer watchdogs, the issue runs deeper than repetitive content. As AI becomes embedded in the transaction itself, the industry is confronting harder questions around trust, disclosure, liability and consumer protection.

In other words: The AI honeymoon is over.

AI everywhere, all at once

For many real estate professionals, generative AI represents a fundamental shift in how agents market homes and manage daily work. Pritesh Damani, chief technology officer for The Real Brokerage, argues that the "AI slop" narrative misses the point.

"I don't consider it slop," Damani told Real Estate News. "I consider it just better content."

He contends AI is already better than humans at many tasks — and continuing to improve quickly. The real change, he said, isn't quality but scale: AI can produce an overwhelming amount of content in a short period of time.

Damani compared the moment to the mechanization of agriculture — a productivity leap that reshaped entire industries. Ultimately, he argues, an agent's job is still to sell homes, while AI handles the repetitive tasks that once ate into productivity.

The message for agents is not to fear replacement, he said, but to embrace automation. At Real, according to Damani, 98% of the code produced in the past eight months was generated by AI.

"Every time I do something, I ask myself, 'How can I get an AI to do this?'" he said. "Start replacing yourself actively while you're in control of it."

Milli Vanilli and the trust problem

For Holly Mabery, eXp Realty's chief brokerage officer, the AI surge feels more like a cautionary tale.

"It reminds me of Milli Vanilli," Mabery said, referencing the '80s pop duo stripped of a Grammy after it was revealed they were lip-syncing.

As AI-generated content becomes more polished, the issue isn't just quality — it's authenticity. Consumers may begin to question whether the person they're hiring is actually doing the work, or whether their online persona is being outsourced to a machine.

"What is real and what is not? At the core of everything, it has to be you," Mabery said. "We have to go to the heart of how you are going to show up for that client."

AI may enhance messaging and automate busywork, she added, but it cannot replace an agent's credibility — particularly in a business built on trust, where consumers increasingly need to "trust but verify."

That mindset is already shaping brokerage policy. Mabery said eXp updated its listing agreement last fall to disclose that AI may be used in the creation of marketing materials, and the company began training agents on best practices around photo enhancement and virtual staging, partly in anticipation of new California disclosure rules.

"We wanted to get out in front of it," she said. "People should know what's real and what's been virtually enhanced."

From marketing automation to contract risk

Wendy Gilch, a research fellow with the Consumer Policy Center, said AI's risks extend well beyond marketing.

While powerful, AI can still produce incomplete or incorrect information. The danger, she said, emerges when consumers — or agents — rely on it for legal or financial decisions involving contracts, inspections or underwriting.

"At what point are you using that instead of a lawyer knowing that it's not always correct?" Gilch said.

Real estate rules vary widely by state and often require licensed expertise. Yet increasingly, buyers are consulting AI tools before they speak to an agent — sometimes using those responses as a baseline for negotiation or decision-making.

"If you're blindly using it and taking the first answer it's given you to make really big decisions, that's really dangerous," she said.

The question of agent value

As AI integrates deeper into agent workflows, Gilch warned the industry may face a new kind of consumer skepticism. The highly publicized commissions lawsuits already raised questions about agent value — if AI is now drafting marketing materials and generating CMAs or pricing recommendations, buyers and sellers may wonder what agents are actually doing to earn their fees.

"If an agent is using AI to do the research, to do maybe a lot of the things that they may have done in the past, I can see why people would question, 'Why am I paying you?'" she said.

Those are the types of issues, Gilch added, that the industry should be trying to get ahead of.

"In 10 to 15 years, are we going to look at [our approach to] AI and think, 'We probably should have done this differently'?"