Landlords are quietly using AI to transform grim apartments into sleek, sunlit spaces, and renters are often blindsided when they arrive in person.
A report from Futurism highlighted the trend, pointing to rental listings where photos have been digitally cleaned up to erase stains, brighten lighting, and stage modern furniture that does not exist in real life.
Image experts found rooms where walls looked freshly painted online but were visibly damaged in person, and cases where AI tools even shifted proportions of rooms to make them appear larger.
Photography site PetaPixel also flagged agents using AI to reshape spaces entirely on real estate platforms, removing imperfections and altering layouts in ways that do not match reality.
Landlords use AI to clean up apartments
The practice has grown quickly across marketplaces like Zillow and Facebook Marketplace as generative tools have become mainstream.
In Australia, lawmakers are already responding, and legislators are pushing rules that would force real estate listings to disclose AI editing after complaints from renters who arrived at properties that looked dramatically worse than the photos.
While US law does not explicitly ban AI-edited real estate photos, misleading presentation can fall under existing advertising rules. However, consumer advocates say platforms need clear disclosure standards before the problem scales further.
For now, there is no consistent policy across major US and UK rental platforms, and while Zillow bans deceptive content, it currently has no specific AI rule.
This leaves renters doing more detective work than ever by checking old photos, asking for video tours, and scrutinizing details that might have been digitally cleaned up to avoid disappointment.
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