From dawn to dusk … an evening sunset adds curb appeal in this before-and-after AI-enhanced property photo. Photograph: Karl Hendon/Getty Images. Illustration: Guardian Design; Gemini AI Homes The rapid rise of housefishing: are AI-enhanced property listings helpful – or sinister? From repainted walls to imaginary lawns, estate agents say modified photos help buyers ‘visualise the potential of a property’. But how much AI enhancement is too much? Agents, viewers and trading standards experts tell all
Prefer the Guardian on Google I t is twilight on a desirable street in Chiswick, or it could be Hampstead, Wilmslow or Hove. A spectacular sunset has left a vivid stripe of orange fading into a violet sky. Against this saturated backdrop, a large Victorian house is clearly outlined despite the darkening atmosphere, perhaps thanks to the lights blazing from every single room. The effect is dazzling, in an unhinged, halfway-through-an-exorcism way. It is also quite obviously fake: a digital trick previously achieved with software such as Photoshop, but increasingly using quicker, cheaper AI programs.
If you are one of the many Britons for whom browsing expensive property listings is a big pastime, you’ll be familiar with the dusk shot, one of the many ways estate agents try to make their wares stand out in the endless scroll of Rightmove, Zoopla and Instagram. It is a level of artifice that most of us are prepared to overlook. We understand we are being sold a dream and we are generally happy to be transported to a world untroubled by the energy crisis, nosy neighbours or natural shadow.
But only up to a point, as estate agents at a branch of Winkworth in south London discovered recently. A disgruntled homebuyer took to Reddit to grumble that the reality of a property they viewed through the agency did not match up to the photos, some of which had been AI-enhanced. They said the home was in poorer condition and felt smaller than it appeared in the listing, and that a chimney breast had been removed in the imagery. It was only later, said the prospective buyer, that they noticed a disclosure of AI enhancement on some pictures. Winkworth took down the images and said the use of AI staging was merely to help buyers “visualise the potential of a property” and had always been disclosed online.
It’s about trust: if you’re selling a product, it needs to look like the thing people are buying Judging by the strength of the response to the Reddit post, this was not a one-off experience. In the AI era, house hunters regularly come across questionable images in listings, a practice known as “housefishing”. One friend spotted the same north London house listed with two agents who had each staged it with different AI-generated furniture. Another, searching for a country house last Christmas, was confronted with a barrage of The Holiday -style snow-furred cottages. “I just couldn’t believe agents thought that was what buyers wanted to see and then actually followed through on it,” he says.
“AI is simply the latest way of putting lipstick on a pig,” says buying agent Nina Harrison of Haringtons. “I recently had a client send me details of what he thought was a fantastic new instruction. It wasn’t. It was the exact same house we’d already viewed and rejected. The photographs had been refreshed, the marketing rewritten, and it looked so different online that he didn’t recognise it. If I hadn’t spotted it, he would have gone back to view the same house for…