Fortunately, I have always been respected and looked to as one willing to examine the greater consequences, from a real estate perspective, surrounding major technological advances. Unfortunately, I believe many in our industry merely default to what can become wholesale and complete capitulation. Case in point: While serving as CEO of Realtor.com, when the internet (another unbeatable creation) was first enjoying acceptance—and causing considerable anxiety within the industry—I introduced the concept of the “real estate outernet.” I did so to illustrate not only how real estate professionals could best leverage the internet, but also to highlight the need to create even greater value beyond this life-changing technology.
Artificial intelligence will also become life changing. One of its most relevant applications for real estate professionals is ChatGPT. When properly prompted—and you can google hundreds of ways to successfully prompt ChatGPT based upon professional needs—this conversational language model can and is augmenting the narrative abilities of how properties, communities and professional value are extolled, and it will do so for decades to come. Moreover, for an industry that is known for its storytelling limitations (i.e., “park-like setting,” “professionally landscaped,” etc.), ChatGPT’s communicative and stimulative enhancement represents great progress.
Therefore, what could be beyond ChatGPT, or what could possibly be missing? Well, with language model AI doubling its capacity every six months—a pace exceeding Moore’s Law, which states that the numbers of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years—there will be many new versions of AI language models. The rapid evolution of language models will include those not only trained from internet-based, human-created text, but even text derived from beyond the web. Google’s new AI language model BARD, named after the Bard of Avon, Shakespeare, introduced in March of this year, is considered by many analysts to be superior at creating more human-sounding responses and using more real-time data than ChatGPT. ChatGPT, however, as many of us have experienced, is considered superior in conversational summarization and paragraph construction.
Although we should expect more human-like text, and while ChatGPT agrees that its service is not “sentient” or human (thus the phrase “artificial intelligence”), BARD will not admit the absence of humanity in its technology. More human-sounding, AI-driven communication is therefore inevitable.
Where is the greatest opportunity for real estate professionals regarding AI-driven language models?
The answer, in my view, is for real estate professionals to make sure that the integration of artificial intelligence incorporates more sentient or, more to our vernacular, human-contributed communication. This means to not only blend the organic with the algorithmic, but to take the organic to unprecedented heights in the following ways:
- To evolve to more collaborative marketing proposals versus outdated and inadequately scripted listing presentations. Collaborative-based marketing proposals are recommended, as when properly executed, they capture the sentient emotions of home sellers, so their text is embedded in the prompts and ensuing narratives. This strategic methodology means going well beyond artificial intelligence by involving “the real thoughts and emotions” of home-seller clients.
- To interview community residents for their experientially based and organic testimonials, as opposed to the impersonal perfection of AI prose when creating community videos.
- To recognize that AI-based and so-called “hallucinations”–a fancy word for misrepresentations or fake news—means that real estate professionals must become even more vigilant and thus more valuable regarding the accuracy of disclosures, along with storytelling accuracy. This is also important due to potential litigation surrounding inaccuracies.
I encourage real estate professionals to be able to say to home sellers the following:
“Folks, we must go well beyond ChatGPT or BARD, etc. in telling your lifestyle story, because buyers or people moving to this community want to hear what real humans think, and even more importantly feel.”
Artificial intelligence regarding real estate narratives must become three dimensional. Specifically, the complete narrative must include AI text, agent editing and text, and the contribution of consumer, client and community journalism. Ironically, although the real estate industry was once known for keeping or gating information from consumers, perhaps its future value will depend on gaining more information and storytelling from clients.
Years ago, as an example of forward thinking, I secured the URL “prop touch” to balance “prop tech.” Moving beyond AI-driven language models will require what I refer to as prop touch. It has also been said that AI will eliminate many knowledge-based professions. Accordingly, real estate knowledge, in order to enjoy sustainable value moving forward must include the experiential knowledge and feelings of home sellers as important components of any integrated AI language model that pertains to real estate home-marketing narratives. This means not just working with…but going beyond…the value of artificial intelligence.
As daunting as the task of going beyond these language models might appear to we mere mortals, in light of ever-evolving artificial intelligence and its subset in the form of machine learning, it is essential that future real estate-related communication—unlike other fields that will be disrupted rather than enhanced—must include client and consumer participation.
By the way, this article was written without the assistance of ChatGPT. I invite you to compare what ChatGPT has to say about how real estate agents can best use their service. Don’t prompt ChatGPT with “Should real estate descriptions include homesellers?” as you will merely provide it with the answer. Just see if it is brought up. If it does, that will be an affirmation that real estate professionals should prompt homesellers to be storytelling contributors. If it does not bring this dimension up, then you will have a head start over your real estate competitors.
Allan Dalton is SVP of Research & Development for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and HomeServices of America.
For more information, visit https://www.bhhs.com/.
