Everybody and their uncle are trying to utilize artificial intelligence (AI). The real estate industry is no exception. From individual agents, to teams, to brokerages, to companies, everyone is testing out AI as a way to improve their services and profits.
How is it being used in real estate? Glad you asked.
There is a lot of chatter in the agent community about how the “Generative” AI services can help with our day to day lives. Agents claim to be using it to do things like create content for their marketing (social media and otherwise), refining their marketing strategy, and creating their listing descriptions, among other things.
Companies competing to provide the most advanced generative service is the most prominent recent trend in AI. Most are web-based at this point, some focus on images while others focus on text. The services feel more interactive than the public has seen before, and they are definitely more capable. And at the moment they are offering free access.
AI also seems to be deployed behind the scenes. The chat features of real estate websites and apps is probably the most familiar example. Larger companies have been working for a while to increase the personalization and automation of their interactions with consumers. They want to be able to respond immediately while the potential client is paying attention to them. And they want to try to address the specific concerns of the potential client.
“Narrow” AI services, those that use extensive training datasets to guide humans toward particular outcomes in a focused area, are a good way to approach this goal. An always-on chatbot can be a cost-effective way to engage a potential customer and route them to either the information they seek or a human who can help close the deal.
In the coming years more and more of our work will be influenced by the various types of AI. We’re already seeing a rush to incorporate the technology into products and services that real estate agents tend to buy. I regularly see ads that tout how AI integration enables the cool new feature being pitched – and not just in real estate products.
It also seems likely that in each passing month more of our AI interactions will be indirect rather than via the website of our favorite generative service. This is because the integrated services tend to be more refined, and add more value. We don’t have to figure out how to make them work, they just work on their own.
Stay tuned, we’ll continue to cover the AI trend as we have observations and thoughts to share.
Image generated by Dall-E using the Microsoft Bing Image Creator