AI is cursing renters with the promise of impossible homes
AI is cursing renters with the promise of impossible homes
人工智能正用虚假的住房承诺“诅咒”租房者
“Virtual staging” might be able to cram a six-seater dining table into a studio apartment, but tenants can’t. “虚拟布置”或许能把一张六人餐桌塞进单间公寓，但租客们却做不到。
Joyce, a native New Yorker, didn’t think finding her first solo apartment in the city would be easy. But she also didn’t think it’d be “hell.” After looking at a lot of tiny, overpriced places she described as “shitholes,” Joyce found her dream apartment: a reasonably priced studio in Manhattan. 作为土生土长的纽约人，乔伊斯（Joyce）本以为在城里找第一间独居公寓不会太容易，但她也没想到会是“人间地狱”。在看过许多被她形容为“垃圾坑”的狭小且溢价严重的房子后，乔伊斯终于找到了她梦想中的公寓：一间位于曼哈顿、价格合理的单间公寓。
“It was big and airy, and there was a fireplace,” she said. The kitchen was small but well equipped and looked like it had been recently renovated. She dropped everything to see the apartment, and when she got there, she learned that five other women, all around her age, had viewings scheduled after hers. “它宽敞通风，还有一个壁炉，”她说。厨房虽小但设施齐全，看起来像是刚翻新过。她放下手头所有事赶去实地看房，到了之后才发现，还有五位和她年纪相仿的女性排在她后面看房。
“I get in, and it’s not the same apartment at all,” she told me. It was much smaller than it looked in the pictures. The kitchen sink was different. The stove was missing several knobs. There was no fireplace. “There’s the idea of the apartment that we saw in the pictures,” she said, and then there was the apartment itself. “My friend said we should’ve known it was AI because there was a plant on the gas stove in the picture.” “我进去一看，这根本不是同一间公寓，”她告诉我。它比照片里看起来小得多。厨房水槽不一样，炉灶少了几个旋钮，也没有壁炉。“照片里呈现的是我们想象中的公寓，”她说，而现实中的公寓却是另一回事。“我朋友说我们早该想到这是AI生成的，因为照片里煤气灶上竟然放着一盆植物。”
New York City brokers have always had a knack for making even the most run-down apartments look passable in photos, but generative AI has given them the ability to do so with the click of a button. For renters, this means spending even more time scrutinizing every listing to avoid ending up in an apartment that looks far better online than it does in person. 纽约市的房产经纪人向来擅长通过拍照让破旧的公寓看起来还凑合，但生成式AI让他们只需点击一下按钮就能做到这一点。对于租房者来说，这意味着他们必须花更多时间仔细审查每一条房源信息，以避免租到那些“网图精美、实地破烂”的房子。
Virtual staging isn’t new, but AI is. Bee, a Realtor who works in Florida who asked that her last name be withheld for privacy reasons, said virtual staging often helps people envision how they could refurnish or remodel a home. “You’d be surprised how little creativity a buyer or renter has,” she said. “Virtual staging could be anywhere from, like, $40 to $400 based on what you’re having these stagers do, whereas real-life staging can’t be done for under a couple grand.” 虚拟布置并非新鲜事，但AI的应用却是。一位在佛罗里达州工作的房地产经纪人Bee（出于隐私考虑要求隐去姓氏）表示，虚拟布置通常能帮助人们构想如何重新装修或改造房屋。“你会惊讶地发现，买家或租客的想象力有多匮乏，”她说。“根据布置需求的不同，虚拟布置的费用大约在40到400美元之间，而现实中的实景布置费用通常不会低于几千美元。”
She showed me a photo from one of her active listings, a house with furniture she described as “dated.” The living room had plush sofas, an ornate wood coffee table, a Persian-style rug, and heavy drapery. Then she showed me the way she redecorated it with ChatGPT. The white sofa, track lighting, and plain, woven rug were decidedly modern. She said the edited photo isn’t going on the listing, but she does share it with clients to demonstrate how they could update the space. 她向我展示了她手中一套在售房源的照片，里面的家具被她形容为“过时”。客厅里摆着毛绒沙发、华丽的木制咖啡桌、波斯风格地毯和厚重的窗帘。随后，她展示了用ChatGPT重新装饰后的效果：白色沙发、轨道灯和简约的编织地毯，显得非常现代。她说这张修改后的照片不会放进房源列表，但她会分享给客户，以展示如何升级空间。
Real estate agents and brokers have several virtual staging tools at their disposal. Bee’s favorites are Stuccco and BoxBrownie, both of which charge per listing. But Bee said there’s a difference between using virtual staging software to show what a house could look like with new furniture and a few DIY upgrades, and using AI tools to create misleading listings. “There’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” she said. “I think ‘digitally altered’ is not accurate. I don’t necessarily put ‘digitally altered’ if I have AI make a bed, but ‘digitally altered,’ to me, says, ‘I patched a hole.’” 房地产经纪人手头有多种虚拟布置工具。Bee最喜欢的是Stuccco和BoxBrownie，它们都按房源收费。但Bee指出，使用虚拟布置软件展示房屋在更换家具和简单DIY升级后的效果，与利用AI工具制造误导性房源之间存在本质区别。“这迟早会引发诉讼，”她说。“我认为‘数字修改’这个词不够准确。如果我用AI生成一张床，我不一定会标注‘数字修改’，但在我看来，‘数字修改’通常意味着‘我修补了一个破洞’。”
Madison, a Queens resident, said she wanted to get a head start on looking for apartments before her lease is up in the fall. In her six years of living in New York, she’s found apartments via Facebook groups and, once, through a post on the queer dating and classifieds app Lex. This time, she’s been looking on StreetEasy, where she’s seen a proliferation of AI-enhanced listings. 居住在皇后区的麦迪逊（Madison）表示，她想在秋季租约到期前提前开始找房。在纽约生活的六年里，她曾通过Facebook群组找到过公寓，也曾通过酷儿约会及分类信息应用Lex上的帖子找到过。这一次，她在StreetEasy上寻找房源，却发现AI增强后的房源信息泛滥成灾。
Joyce, who spent months looking for apartments, noticed that AI-enhanced listings often feature a proliferation of potted plants. 花了几个月找房的乔伊斯注意到，AI增强后的房源照片里往往充斥着大量的盆栽植物。
“I think scammy or misleading pictures for apartments have existed for as long as internet listings for apartments have, but it’s really egregious now,” she said. Whereas pre-AI real estate scams included photos of totally different apartments, “now I’m looking at a picture of a room that more or less looks real until you start looking at the details of the furniture and things like that, where they clearly took a picture of the actual room and said, ‘Hey, ChatGPT, can you put some furniture in this for me?’” “我认为虚假或误导性的公寓照片从互联网房源出现时就存在了，但现在的情况实在太恶劣了，”她说。在AI出现之前，房地产诈骗通常是直接放完全不同的公寓照片，而“现在我看到的房间照片看起来大体真实，直到你开始观察家具等细节，才会发现他们显然是拍了真实的房间，然后对ChatGPT说：‘嘿，能帮我往这儿放点家具吗？’”
Some states are starting to crack down on AI-enhanced listings. New York recently implemented a law mandating disclosure of AI in ads, but the legislation mostly focuses on “synthetic performers,” not on AI-generated furniture. But the New York secretary of state did issue a warning last year about misleading AI-generated or AI-enhanced listings, noting that brokers are already prohibited from posting dishonest advertisements. 一些州已开始打击AI增强房源。纽约州最近实施了一项法律，要求在广告中披露AI的使用，但该立法主要针对“合成表演者”，而非AI生成的家具。不过，纽约州州务卿去年确实发布过关于误导性AI生成或增强房源的警告，指出经纪人本就禁止发布不实广告。
California’s recent Altered Image Law goes a step further, requiring anyone advertising property to disclose when they’ve used AI to alter or enhance images. But much like broker and Realtor regulations, laws governing the use of AI in listings and other advertisements vary from state to state. 加州最近出台的《图像修改法》（Altered Image Law）更进一步，要求任何房产广告发布者在利用AI修改或增强图像时必须进行披露。然而，就像经纪人监管条例一样，各州关于在房源及其他广告中使用AI的法律规定各不相同。
Joyce, who found an apartment after searching for several months, said that even the descriptions appear to be AI-generated. “Everything is ‘charming.’ Everything is ‘cozy.’ You notice the same wording patterns over and over again, where everything has ‘spa-like finishes,’” she said. “Brokers are already so dishonest, and now they have, like, the lying machine in their pocket.” 在搜索数月后终于找到公寓的乔伊斯表示，甚至连房源描述看起来都是AI生成的。“一切都是‘迷人的’，一切都是‘舒适的’。你会反复注意到同样的措辞模式，所有东西都有‘水疗般的装修’，”她说。“房产经纪人本来就已经很不诚实了，现在他们口袋里还装上了‘撒谎机器’。”