Real estate agent here. Standard practice across most MLS providers is now to allow ‘AI enhancement’ of listing photos - sky replacement, removing power lines, adjusting lawn color. Disclosure requirements vary by state. Some require it, some don’t. Im noticing buyers showing up to in-person tours and being visibly disappointed in the gap between the listing photos and reality. when does enhancement become misrepresentation
From marketing side: this is the same question every industry that uses photography is wrestling with. fashion went through it 20 years ago with airbrushing. food photography has been doing this forever with motor oil for syrup. the difference now is AI lets non-photographers do this in seconds for free. the standard im seeing emerge in adjacent industries is: any modification that changes a material fact (the property has cleaner siding, the sky is blue) requires disclosure. cosmetic adjustments (slight color correction, brightness) don’t. but the line is moving.
Publisher angle: we now require AI disclosure on every image we license that has been touched. Just a metadata tag noting the modification type. Took 6 months to roll out and we lost a few stock photo providers who refused, but readers actually responded positively to the disclosures.
ecommerce here. we ran into the same issue with product photos. our return rate spiked 11% on items where listing photos were AI-enhanced for color saturation. we pulled the enhancement and returns dropped back to baseline within a month. the math doesnt actually work in favor of enhancement once you account for returns.
@Nico_Brandt that return rate stat is really useful. going to bring this up at our brokerage meeting. if we can put numbers on showing-to-listing alignment rates we might get policy changed faster.