Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered software and programs have been a part of Marki Lemons Ryhal’s business repertoire for years. And she incorporated ChatGPT right away last winter when its first version was launched by OpenAI.

ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.

“It is the most excited I have been about a tool in 15 years. I’m seeing it help me in my own business and giving me the ability to repurpose content I’ve already created,” says Lemons Ryhal, a REALTOR® with EXIT Strategy Realty in Chicago. She also is a keynote speaker, best-selling author, founder of the e-learning provider ReMarkiTable LLC, new host of the National Association of REALTORS® monthly podcast, “Drive with NAR,” and Federal Political Coordinator for NAR.

Lemons Ryhal jumped on the bandwagon quickly, researched its capabilities and now offers several classes on AI and ChatGPT for REALTORS® who want to increase their return on investment.

“Can they still do business the way they’ve been doing it?” she asks about fellow REALTORS®. “What is the value of their time? The more you rely on the traditional way of doing things, you are reducing your earnings.”

AI has been around for longer than people might realize. Amazon made Application Programming Interface available in 2015 to real estate agents, meaning it could transfer real estate data from a third-party provider to a website, says Carrie Little. She also remembers when her area MLS started using AI to grab data from homes using a feature in the Homesnap app.

“Today Homesnap allows agents to build augmented reality images for properties,” says Little, designated managing broker at CarMarc Realty Group, LLC. in Warrenville.

Augmented reality is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content.

“We use AI to help with photography and the MLS to help select the rooms found in photos. We use augmented reality for our listings,” she adds.

Her brokerage is currently using ChatGPT and Canva Magic Write, Canva’s version of AI, to write consumer remarks for a new listing, quick letters, emails, blog posts and to come up with ideas to create content for marketing.

“My most recent way of using ChatGPT is to take my YouTube videos and have it write a blog post by listening to the video,” Little says.

She believes there are many things AI can do to transform someone’s real estate business including:

• Jumpstart content ideas. Have you ever been stuck trying to create a social media post? Ask ChatGPT to create the content for you.
• Start a blog, and you can use a script you’ve written for a video to turn into a blog post.
• Respond to consumers more quickly when you need to send a quick email.
• Create auto responders for your CRM.
• Write introduction letters to consumers and explain why they should use you in business. Agents can also pull information from their blog, social media, website or content they have previously created to write letters.
• Make videos for exclusive Facebook groups in your niche – such as Little does once a month for her first-time homebuyer group.

Marki Lemons Ryhal

For REALTORS® and property managers who must create listing descriptions for rental properties, a new AI-powered tool called Housie can generate those descriptions in a few seconds by adding in a few prompts. Housie uses natural language processing and machine learning to generate SEO-friendly descriptions tailored to each property.

“When ChatGPT came out, I was all over it. We needed to come up with a real-world application,” says New Yorker Hemant Chavan, founder of Housie. He also is co-founder of Brik+Click, micro stores connecting brands with their customers.

If your agents are hesitant about AI or ChatGPT, Chavan suggests they begin following REALTORS® on social media and blogging about the uses of these innovations. They can learn the applications quickly, which can make completing their tasks faster and easier, he adds.

According to OpenAI, a new GPT-4 was introduced in March to some controversy. GPT-4 is OpenAI’s most advanced system, producing safer and more useful responses, the company says. It is said to solve difficult problems with greater accuracy, with broader general knowledge and problem-solving abilities. It can write songs, produce screenplays or even learn a user’s writing style.

However, some big names such as SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak are concerned about where all this is going without regulations. Musk, Wozniak and many AI experts posted an open letter in March on the website of the nonprofit Future of Life Institute. They are calling for a six-month halt of GPT innovations or the world could face “profound risks to society and humanity.”

The letter goes on to say that “AI research and development should be refocused on making todays powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy and loyal.”

The group is also asking the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to start an investigation into OpenAI to see whether the commercial release of the tool violates U.S. and global regulations.

The FTC warned people in a press release at end of March that scammers are using AI to clone family member’s voices by collecting short audio clips they find on social media or elsewhere.

Carrie Little

The scammers then call family members using the voice of a loved one, such as a granddaughter, telling the grandparent that they are in trouble and need money – or whatever the scam is. The FTC tells people to not trust the voice. Call the family member or friend to whom you supposedly talked and verify the story. If you can’t get a hold of them on the phone number you know is theirs, try to call other family members or their friends, the FTC states.

Under the scam, they may ask you to pay or send money by wiring it, sending cryptocurrency, or buying gift cards and giving them the card numbers or PINs. It is hard to get the money returned.

“I do have concerns about AI because anything in the wrong hands is a bad thing,” says Lemons Ryhal. “In every FBI show or “Law and Order,” you see deep fakes. Any tool in a criminal mind is a bad tool.”

Benjamin Kuipers explains that ChatGPT does not understand what it is talking about.

“The only thing it does is to generate a string of output words that has relatively high probability (given the words input and output) that have gone before,” says Kuipers, professor of computer science and engineering at the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.

It estimates those probabilities from information it has gathered by scanning pretty much all the text available on the internet. Most of that text was written by humans, who do have some degree of understanding of what they are talking about, he says.

“But lots of it is fiction, and some of it is lies,” he states. “As a human, you have learned to infer something about the beliefs of a human speaker from what they say, even if it is poorly formed. However, those same skills, when applied to the output of ChatGPT and similar algorithms, are misleading because there is no understanding there.”

Although AI and ChatGPT can be game changers for REALTORS®, caution and careful research can help along the way. Little says to build an ethical business using AI, it is recommended to confirm what you are receiving is correct.

She also encourages REALTORS® to only add AI and ChatGPT as a tool and not as a replacement for learning and doing all the work.

“AI is only as smart as what it finds online. As it gets smarter, we can be more confident,” she comments.

If you ask it to write a blog post to attract potential buyers and sellers, make sure you read the response, edit the response, and confirm that it does not violate license law and the REALTOR® Code of Ethics.

“It’s often assumed that agents like to take shortcuts, and this is one place where you do not want to take the quick road to content,” Little says. “However, if you use AI, you will work faster.”

About the writer: Lee Nelson is an Illinois-based writer whose work regularly appears in REALTOR® Magazine and other industry publications.

When using AI, be sure the representations are true, accurate and do not contain work that is copyrighted or owned by others. When representing characteristics of physical properties, be sure those are accurate representations of actual properties and are not used to “hide” actual defective conditions.

As the real estate professionals stated, even with advanced tools to increase efficiency, the Real Estate License Act and REALTOR® Code of Ethics require that all representations are true and not misleading.