NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings
petapixel.comThis is awesome! StreetEasy is how many New Yorkers find apartments. In the past few years, it has been flooded with AI-staged apartments. The AI stagings warp the room to fit furniture that would 100% certainly not fit there. It’s deceptive, and I’m glad it at least requires disclosure now (although I wish it were fully banned)
Not going to lie, I wish they also added a square footage as a legal requirement too.
It is entirely baffling to me as to why, but NYC is the only major city in the US I've ever lived in where it is genuinely a problem. In all other cities, I had no issues with that, pretty much every single posting online had square footage.
Meanwhile, on StreetEasy (and other platforms listing NYC rental units), looking for apartments is a major pain, because majority have zero square footage info. And then it turns into a pure guessing game that becomes super annoying, because an apartment I might be interested in is listed only as "1 bedroom", but just looking at the pics it is impossible to gauge whether it is 400sqft or 900sqft. Knowing that info would have made it much easier for renters, and I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.
There is square footage on many NYC listings, but it’s wrong. They often have the square footage of the total area occupied by the apartment, including all the interior walls and columns that can take 20% of the area away.
Wild. In Netherlands (and I assume other European countries as well) there’s a regulatory norm for how spaces should be measured - what counts as liveable, non-liveable, etc. It’s so much fairer and clearer for everyone involved.
https://www.nen.nl/bouw/beheer-en-onderhoud/oppervlaktebepal...
Back in the third world I remember my parents looked up the reference price per m^2 in the area and would divide the price by that to estimate the size.
Advertised amounts would be off by 20-25%. When you confronted them about it realtors would just give you the real number, I guess most people wouldn't go through the trouble so it was worth trying for them.
We largely have these regulations in the US too (at the state level), we just don't reuse them. Naturally there are rules about what is livable versus what is not. A balcony is not. A room with no windows isn't even a bedroom. That kind of stuff.
It would be truly trivial to then just transform that to calculating square footage, and many states do just that. But not all. It's a problem of motivation, not necessarily ability or cost.
Regulations? That sounds very anti freedom.
Right? Germany too. I wouldn’t even have thought this could be a problem…
In some countries, like a poster mentioned, they include the “built” size, not the actual liveable size. Sometimes the balconies are included in that, and it is misleading. Two bedrooms in 900sqf liveable is one thing vs 3 bedrooms in 900sqf built area including balconies.
... Huh. This actually explains something I'd been confused about before; people on this site claiming that a 1000sqft apartment was small. Which, I suppose, if you include the entire footprint of the apartment including balconies, sure. It would never have occurred to me to do it like that.
Maybe it’s different for rentals but you’d think the banks would also want accurate data on the properties they’re mortgaging…and cities for tax revenue…so strange!
For big commercial rental properties they probably don’t care because it doesn’t really push the property value.
I don’t think it really changes the property value because those interior walls are usually cosmetic and not load bearing. If the bank has to foreclose, the next buyer will be well aware they can strip those walls out for nothing relative to the cost of buying the building.
I’m doubtful it pushes the tax revenue for the same reason, everyone is already evaluating based on what it could be.
Smaller units are probably just not worth the effort to manage. It’s a lot of over head to start auditing old duplexes where the owner has a property or two and isn’t a giant company with a whole compliance department.
Why? Banks and cities only care about the price. They also want price to be under and over estimated respectively, neither would want the accurate price, even less so the accurate area.
Are there no property taxes in the US? And how do you know if the price is reasonable without knowing its relationship to the property size?
There are property taxes in the US, they are levied on the appraisal price of the property, not on the living area. You know the price is reasonable from the comps. As you're overestimating or the appraisal is already at the legal cap (in case of taxes) you don't really care about the living area.
There are no US-wide property taxes. However, almost every home in the US has to pay property taxes to at least one level of government. That's what pandaman was referring to when they said the city (which would be levying the taxes) would want the footprint overstated so they could get more tax revenue
Well technically, if anything, overstating the area available for rent would increase the paper value of your property, and thus usually your taxes.
I didn’t know the square footage of my apartment until I had built an app that utilizes LiDAR to actually measure it. Broker told me 650 square feet - it’s precisely 505 square feet.
(Won’t advertise my app, but you can find many on the iOS App Store).
Would be nice for StreetEasy to have some kind of third party verification about apartment size claims.
If you are hesitant to mention it in the comments, please consider at least putting it in your profile bio. This sounds like a genuinely useful tool that I would personally want to use myself.
Done. Enjoy!
Do mention your app! HN only frowns upon astroturfing. If you disclose that it is your app, then it's fine to link to it.
Louis Rossmann has a number of videos from the period when he was searching for retail space in Manhattan. He would take a laser measure and verify listing info himself. The sf on listings was almost universally not just wrong, but audaciously wrong. "Whatcha gonna do about it?" wrong.
Don't forget about those common areas too! I've seen many cases where hallways, elevators, and stairwells were included in the square footage numbers.
The normal definition of square footage I've seen typically includes hallways and stairs. (Though often not garages.)
Personally, I wish we would normalize including exact floor plans with measurements.
They mean the apartment building hallways and elevators. As in, if you summed the square footage of all the apartments on a floor, you'd get a number greater than the actual dimensions of the floor, because the common areas are counted multiple times.
Oh, I see. Yeah, that's false advertising. "Square footage" of a dwelling should only include your own private space, not any common areas.
Could include the size of the pavements fronting the building and the basement with those trash bin also are shared space.
That shouldn’t be the case. In some cases it would also be ridiculous, when the common areas are larger than the apartments themselves (corridors, elevators, technical rooms, etc.). They do include the proportional square footage corresponding to each apartment. But this is still very misleading because some buildings have a lot of common areas that can double the advertised size of the very small apartments.
They also often include external square footage like balconies which warp it.
> and I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.
The reason is simple. Omission is deception.
If it had a “good” square footage, it would be touted front and center. Because it’s not, you know it doesn’t.
I see this all the time with motorcycle PPE. If something was CE A, AA, or AAA rated, it’d be at the top of the description/specs. When it’s not, I know it’s not so I just move on.
Where it gets tricky is when the good people and bad people start working together because they both sell bad products. What I mean is: purposefully not advertising your good traits front and center, so that your worse product then "shine" more. And then everyone catches on and all your signals are gone. It happens sometimes.
I wish that e-bike ads had the classification. The bike classes are well-defined AFAIK - it's the class legality that's regional, if any. Right now, they're actively helping riders skirt/evade the laws.
I'm pretty sure if they stopped skirting the laws, it'd eliminate a decent cohort of their customer base. Watching someone come through a pedestrian area at 45 mph on a "bicycle" that clearly is an electric motorcycle is pretty interesting.
Holy crap! How do they stop at that speed with those thin bicycle tires?
Very slowly. Stopping is not as a big of an issue as cornering though - not only they don't have adequate traction for the speed and mass but they also don't use the front brake. Which is great as the trails which are fun to ride because of all the bends are also e-bike free other than old people riding their pedal-assist bikes at 15 mph.
What thin bicycle tires - they are much thicker than normal.
However yes they are a problem.
My e-scooter reaches 45 mph (advertised as 53). Normally, you would stop using the brakes or regen.
No value is essentially "smaller than you would find acceptable."
> just looking at the pics it is impossible to gauge whether it is 400sqft or 900sqft
Those are not good pics. Probably* for the same reason, to hide size and maybe something else.
*Depends on culture and I don't know about NYC. I've seen another landlord's market where quite a few landlords just post one or two useless photos — and even heard advice to pay attention to such postings as they're definitely not prepared by a professional agent.
Square footage is very much a lie in San Francisco as well
> I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.
Because it's to an extreme degree a landlord's market and thus none of them have any incentive to do more than the bare minimum?
Even if it was listed everyone would "stretch" things by including closets and the like. The only way it would work is if the city did the measurements and maintained a database...but then you'd have people bribing the inspectors. they already do it over fire code.
Renting an apartment should require at a minimum registration, inspection (fire code - window/egress, detectors, and ideally an extinguisher and fire blanket), proof of insurance, and some sort of bond per unit that the city holds onto and uses for emergency code compliance repairs.
Why isn’t regulation and enforcement a solution? Why must the city be the ones to measure spaces?
How it works in plenty of other countries…
> Because it's to an extreme degree a landlord's market and thus none of them have any incentive to do more than the bare minimum?
okay let's change that? seems bad
It's a landlord's market because there are not enough properties, if there was a larger supply the tenants would be able to make choices and defacto reject bad options.
How do you change that, short of building more?
In Europe we've used regulations. There's standardised ways to measure area of an apartment/house, and it has to be included in any ads and contract of sale/rent. If the actual area doesn't match what's in the ads/contract the landlord/seller will be in trouble. I saw a news article once where the landlord,iirc, had to return all rent money to the tenant. The tenant had lived there for a while(memory is fuzzy, I think it was years, but don't quote me on that) and in the end only paid for electricity.
I hear you guys like suing eachother in the states, seems like this kind of regulation would suit you just fine!
The parent was talking about it being a "landlords market" and wanting that to be changed. I asked how that might be possible.
Improving advertisements to make them accurate, detailed, and directly-comparable is obviously a good thing. But does not change the market in favour of the tenants; the status-quo exists because of a lack of properties. That means no matter how bad the advert(s) tenants have to choose one available. If there were a surplus of properties then it would be a tenant's market.
(I'm in Europe!)
Well, no, but it prevents fraud, which seems to be the bigger problem. A honest dominant force is better than a fraudulent dominant force.
Require advertisements for property to include the floor (and ground) area.
Advertising is already a pretty strict domain by necessity. We used to allow just about every lie under the sun in advertising, and it was universally bad. We systematically broke that down one by one over many decades, and we're still doing it! I mean, these days you can't even sell tobacco without saying "hey we're trying to kill you btw".
This is a very well-trodden path, I think.
…and define rules for the measurement taken, like no stairs, count areas below roof sloping or outside on balconies etc. with a lower factor, exclude shared areas and cellars/attics, and so on.
Not measuring correctly, not publishing the measurements, or publishing incorrect measurements outside an error margin gets counted as deception. Offer a simple reporting contact point to citizens to report landlords or offers that violate this regulation without a lawsuit.
While that would be useful it would not change it from a landlords-market - which is what the comment I replied to was about.
During the press conference he finished with a light joke that was something like “after all it’s meant to be Street Easy not Street Hard”. I assumed that was an app, your post unintentionally closed the loop for me!
Agree AI modified listing make no sense to allow; regulation here is making up for platform failure.
I tried searching for Flatbush on streeteasy.com and typing “Fla” into the neighborhood typeahead gave me:
Delete the three letters and search for “Bush”:Chelsea [blank] Flatiron Murray Hill Flatbush
Street Hard indeed.Chelsea Chelsea Chelsea Murray HillApartment hunting is an unpleasant chore I haven’t had to do since 2022. It hadn’t even occurred to me that AI slop would be the norm. I really have lived to see man-made horrors beyond my comprehension.
The motivation is good, the implementation sucks.
> requiring disclosure of AI-altered listings
So all the landlords will just disclose it and everyone will continue to be deceived. Just like every other picture on Meta platforms these days says it is AI-edited. That didn't make the feed any better; it's still a feed full of disclosed AI crap.
Why is this mayor so fucking chicken to just BAN AI-altered listings altogether? Have jail time and $1M fines for it. Fines big enough that you would risk losing your property altogether. We need more real leaders.
Relax. This post is wildly aggressive for no reason.
Choice of tone can communicate the same thing as 3-4 paragraphs of calmer discourse. Should we ban the use of tone? Personally I appreciated it and the frustration was palpable.
I'm just tired of regulators realizing the right things to regulate but not implementing them correctly.
Job postings must include a salary range? Who the fuck thought of that? Did they even ask a mathematician whether providing the min() and max() would be useful rather than mean(), median(), and std(), which is what the law really should require?
How many people who are considering hiring their first few employees have an idea of what the minimum they’d likely pay and the maximum they’d likely pay for those new positions? Almost all.
Now how many could even tell you the rough definition of standard deviation, let alone be able to give a value for it? Almost none.
As an applicant for a single opening, it’s not obvious that standard deviation is helpful either.
For normal people, I think that min and max are the two most practical and understandable measures.
> As an applicant for a single opening
You're nitpicking at details. I'm sure you're smart enough to figure out how to write it so that this isn't an issue, but it seems you're more interested in "taking the other side" rather than thinking together about how to increase job compensation transparency.
Here's the problem with minimums: Companies posting ranges of $100K-$900K. Yes, I've seen them.
Here's a hint for everyone else: For small companies and single openings they can just aggregate mean/median/std by job level (E5 average, M1 average), or aggregate horizontally by team (HR average, ops average), whatever. Anything to increase transparency. If you're criticizing the math instead of building on the math, you're clearly against job transparency.
I’m in favor of transparency (and consistently argue for that and act accordingly inside my own company). I’m against adding information that will confuse far more people than it will help.
A company listing $100k-$900k per year for a role that’s not commissioned sales is exhibiting malicious compliance and should be dealt with directly as such rather than adding an additional nearly useless measure to somehow help smoke that out or avoid it.
> Companies posting ranges of $100K-$900K.
Yes, this is extremely Netflix. The "fix" for this is to mandate that they can no longer post an ad for engineers, but rather they have to post separate ads for each engineering role. Maybe this is better, maybe not. If a person applies to L4, are they allowed to be hired at L3 pay? Will that confuse people?
> For small companies and single openings
levels.fyi chooses not to publish some comp datapoints because there's too little data, which means publishing the data is tantamount to publishing an individual's compensation.
I hear you on the goal, but the details are tough.
we need less normal people
For many tech jobs, that still wouldn’t help much. Salary alone is often half or less of total compensation. They’d also need to include stock grants and bonuses for the comparison to be meaningful.
Good point. Absolutely include mean, mean, std of stock grants, bonuses, and sign-on bonuses by law as well.
Caveat: I am pro more transparency in compensation data. But it's hard to do right.
> mean(), median(), and std()
play this out a bit, and you'll quickly realize that there are infinite ways to game this. Something like levels.fyi only works because levels are a thing, and they are consistent across a relative handful of companies (most tech workers do not work at those companies).
And even levels.fyi won't publish salary data until there are enough data points at a company to prevent such publication from inadvertently publishing how much an individual person makes. This makes it less useful for (say) a senior looking for a job at a non-tech or small firm.
I wish there would be a similar thing for food as well. In my country (Brazil), food apps such as iFood are FULL of AI images. Worse is that iFood don't allow reviews to post pictures, so you get very blind asking it.
Now Didi came (99) and Keeta, and they at least allow users to post reviews with pictures.
It's super annoying, but this is a total nothing burger because he doesn't actually have any power to do anything here.
This has also been a problem long before AI with "virtually staged" apartments.
> he doesn't actually have any power to do anything here.
Landlords in nyc are doing business in nyc, which means the city can regulate them, does it not?
The Mayor is not a dictator and can't just make up laws or regulations.
He can probably get DCWP to engage in the normal rule making process, but at most this is probably going to get some AI disclosure somewhere, which is what we had for "virtually staged" lies.
It’s directing the city to treat it as false advertising in existing law if I understand correctly
Right, which is why all we're going to get it a label saying that AI was used (or maybe landlords will try to fly through on the label of "virtually staged" that they've been using).
Existing law doesn't have the authority to ban all AI images as inherently deceptive, and DCWP isn't going to be spending a bunch of time prosecuting individual images.
I agree with Mamdani that these images are often deceptive and misleading and sifting through the bullshit is annoying (and was annoying with virtually staged images too). It's just not going to go anywhere. The energy would be better spent on zoning and building code reform.
> The energy would be better spent on zoning and building code reform.
you've constructed a false dichotomy here.
the government of a city with ~8 million people is capable of doing multiple things at the same time.
I take it you are a lawyer specializing in NY real estate law, then? Would be interesting to hear a more detailed analysis if so.
The law applies to everyone, so it's reasonable for everyone to try to understand it, not just attorneys.
Similarly, it's fine for people to have opinions on food, dental hygiene, and the tax code without being a chef, a dentist, and an accountant.
I thought it was illegal in new york (and probably the rest of the us) to give legal advice if not a lawyer.
And in my understanding interpreting the law as opposed to just reciting it constitutes legal advice.
No, merely analyzing or discussing the law generally does not constitute the practice of law. If it did, plenty of newspaper articles, law review journals (often written by law students), non-attorney legal aid, and legal pamphlets would be prohibited.
If you want something more concrete, I googled it, and in New York, there appears to have been a case New York County Lawyers’ Association v. Dacey, in which Dacey wrote a book "How to Avoid Probate!", and the NYCA accepted a dissent in a lower court, stating in part:
and later humorously quoting:Does the writing, publication, advertising, sale and distribution of "How To Avoid Probate!" constitute the unauthorized practice of law within the meaning of subdivision B of section 750? It cannot be claimed that the publication of a legal text which purports to say what the law is amounts to legal practice. And the mere fact that the principles or rules stated in the text may be accepted by a particular reader as a solution to his problem does not affect this.
https://accessiblelaw.org/Disclaimer.html"[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions" (Bridges v. California, 314 U. S. 252, 270)Pot, meet kettle.
I am honestly so surprised that everyone on HN is so naive that they take political statements like this at face value.
Politicians routinely say they will do things they do not have the authority to do, and it's often very important to understanding what will actually happen to have some understanding of what authorities are available to them, or at the very least ask Google/LLMs about it.
Ah, so you aren’t a lawyer then.
I hope they don't figure out virtually all housing is photographed with those weird lenses and the colors are enhanced digitally
What do you call a reverse slippery-slope argument? “All images are edited, therefore ai editing is ok.”
Degrees of alteration matter, pretending ai images are the same as color retouching is dumb.
I guess for me, the question is how do you define each degree? If I say something like "Gemini, make the colors pop in my photos!" is that OK?
Yes I'm sure he's talking about disclosure. California has this law state-wide.
I agree, we're going to get a little warning label, just like the "virtually staged" labels that are already there and nothing of consequence will actually change. That is why I say this is a nothing burger.
But that label does serve a purpose. Plenty of people don't know that there's even such a thing as that.
I strongly disagree. This is just the Politician's Fallacy.
I keep harping on about the "virtual staging" that real estate agents have been doing for a decade that is equally deceptive and annoying and already gets labeled, and the labels don't actually help because you're still left trying to decipher what is real yourself.
If they wanted to actually do something useful, they'd get together with the legislature and pass a law saying that real estate listings need to come with floor plans that are accurate within X% under the penalty of some sort of fine with a private right of action. But passing laws is hard and faces opposition.
It ultimately won't matter because they can show no photo at all and people who are desperate will show up for it.
It doesn't really touch the issue of affordable housing so there's not much to cheer for here.
Why are you so certain of this? Oh it was a problem before so we should just keep doing nothing even though it will almost certainly become exponentially worse with AI? Love this plan.
I am so certain of this because I was not born yesterday and this is not my first time paying attention to (NYC) politics.
Politician makes a grand statement they do not have the authority to meaningfully act on to get headlines, DCWP issues a weak sauce disclosure rule and the news cycle moves on because this is not actually anybody's priority.
There's several other areas that would be good to categorically ban AI usage from:
- gambling
- dating
- hiring
- advertising
I say that as an AI maximalist: I fully trust AI with these things. I do not trust the humans using the AI.
> - dating
That's called catfishing.
For the younger generations, it's just called Tuesday.
You trust AI with dating?
Perhaps we need OP to explain "I fully trust AI with these things", because it is difficult to define trust in this sense. Yes of course the human motivation was always going to be the real "AI threat", and fraud (and a hugely increased spam volume) was always going to be the main route of AI damage to society.
They said to ban AI usage in dating (sites, I assume)?
And then immediately wrote “I fully trust AI with these things”
But also wrote that he didn’t trust the humans behind the AI.
Nobody said that he did
Must be a politician
Maybe his taste in partners is just that bad
Does basic photoshop count as AI usage...? What about changing color balance, dynamic range, etc?
Most real estate listing using a type of "HDR" exposure stacking due to the difficulty in taking photos of rooms that exposure the interior correctly and also expose the view from the windows in the same photo. It doesn't show things that aren't there, and personally I see it as acceptable, but I could see some law accidentally making it illegal.
Obviously not, though they may count as misleading image manipulation, and should be similarly regulated. The problem is subjectivity - AI is just a convenient bright line with an easy definition.
I'm not sure the line defining what you would consider AI is actually all that bright. Sharpening? Content-aware fill? Seam carving? Style transfer? How would you define AI to draw the line where you want?
You want the government to monitor people's profiles on dating apps? The ministry of dating photos
Making murder illegal doesn't imply that the government stalks you 24/7 to make sure you don't murder someone
Not every comment on the internet is 100% serious
In this context the opposite would be called "trolling" and is not allowed on HN.
That is not even close to trolling. It's called a joke where you exaggerate the premise because it's an amusing thought.
Oi, you got a loicense for that f-stop slop?
No but we used to call that “photoshopping an image” for a reason, especially when done to an extreme.
I'm sure soon enough dating apps will get smart and instead of the "you have no matches" they will make some fake AI matches so you have a feeling that something is happening and you have a chance of actually meeting someone.
don't they already do that? They used to use real people's photos from other apps. I'm sure they use AI now.
Advertising would be fine if they checked it. Food advertising has used fake images forever, but it's okay because you know the meatballs don't look like that. You have an idea of what warm fries taste like without the fake heat imagery.
But the dress you get is not the same as the dress in the picture. If the model looked like you, the dress should fit the same, but the AI dresses don't. Same figure, same skin color, same height, and yet the dress looks different.
That's the problem with homes. There's no way a room fits that many things but AI will make it look like it does. There's a distortion where it changes the specification entirely.
It's like showing someone playing Fallout 4 on a MacBook Air. It's a deceptive practice, unlike the cereal boxes showing milk.
> Food advertising has used fake images forever, but it's okay because you know the meatballs don't look like that.
Highly disagree. Color retouch or ambience or effects, sure. But changing shape, size, base color and perhaps some other things is deceit. Japan can do this, other countries should able too
I am a big supporter of AI and use it heavily. I agree with this. It's not about AI at all. It's about a blanket ban to prevent deceit when selling a product or service. It should be depicted as it is. AI just lowers the barrier for deceit (unfortunately), but it's not the only tool that can be used towards that end. Ban all deceitful advertising.
AI should not be allowed in photos of products being sold, period. That's pure false advertising. Disclosing is not enough.
Thanks, and you can go ahead and ban all the regular advertising too while you're at it.
I am all for it, where do I sign? The whole ad world has brought nothing but problems to our world.
I think advertising can be done right. Stack Overflow seems to have gotten it right, so much so that I disabled my adblocker for them. What bites me is when the advertisements are for something toward my caveman brain, like being advertised alcohol products while scrolling through instagram. I'd like the ability to say: "yes tell me about the newest raspberry pi products, but don't keep advertising gambling services".
Isn’t the more thorough solution banning deceptive product advertising?
It feels like this is already a whole thing that should already be solved.
Because every time something new comes along, people will push boundaries while arguing it is acceptable. In this case, they may argue that it is no different from physically furnishing an apartment, taking some photos, then removing the furniture. At least in terms of representing the product. Clearly using AI is much easier and cheaper than physically furnishing the apartment for a couple of hours. Some may even genuinely believe this, seeing it as more a tool of convenience than something that doesn't always represent physical reality.
That doesn't answer the question. If you used photoshop's content-aware fill (introduced over a decade ago) to hide imperfections in your apartment, that would still be deceptive advertising. Moreover it's almost as easy as asking AI to do it, so the "AI makes everything easier" excuse doesn't work either.
I think the reason is clear. Politicians love to enact bills for already illegal things, but tailored for the current thing. In this case, it's AI, which there's bipartisan opposition. It makes them look responsive to their constituents and requires no political capital, because it's uncontroversial.
It's not just good PR for politicians to pass "<specific instance> case of already illegal <generic> is explicitly illegal"-laws. Prosecuting a violation of <generic> tends to be a lot harder because in addition to providing evidence for <specific instance> it requires convincing a judge that <generic> even applies to <specific instance> in the first place. You get to short-circuit that ordeal by passing a law that clarifies the intent that yes, <specific instance> is in fact an instance of <generic> without having to go all the way through setting precedent in higher courts.
The whole point of staging furniture is to help visualize and contextualize. Seeing a staged bed, couch, coffee table etc gives you a picture of how large or cramped the room is. AI furniture in contrast isn't limited by physics or reality and does not assist in showing the size of a room. It's only purpose is to deceive the viewer.
AR visualizations where virtual models that are true to real world furniture is much more acceptable.
Oh man I had never considered false perspective furniture for staging photos before.
Its surprisingly common, even well before the current wave of AI. People just photoshop in furniture that does not follow the correct perspective. Sometimes its very obvious, sometimes you need to look closely.
Probably starts with the most egregious offenders first and then spreads. It'll be interesting to see if other communities follow suite.
Yes, but landlords are inherently evil so if you want to keep the slopulism going you gotta hit them first.
Wasn't that already implicitly the case? Aren't there laws against deceptive advertising?
It sounds like an incredibly sensible rule. But is this something a mayor can just declare? Isn't this something aa legislative body has to decide?
It's exactly because there are laws against deceptive advertising that Mamdani can enact theses rules.
NYC's Administrative Code prohibits deceptive trade practices, false advertising, misleading representations made to customers, etc. It gives the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection authority to execute those broad guidelines by enacting specific rules.
So Mamdani and the DCWP are basically saying, "City law gives us the authority to regulate this sort of thing, and because this is clearly in violation, here are the specific rules we're enacting to regulate it."
This makes sense. So my two questions are the answer to each other. Interesting.
Thanks for that clarification. I was scouring the article and this comment section for some sort of clarification on how this would be enforced, since nowhere does it say that a new law was being passed or something.
I agree with the goals of the policy but I don't understand how it's enforced.
How do you determine if something is enhanced by AI versus just Photoshop or something else? Apart from being physically impossible, I suppose.
This is a frustrating trend with real estate agents on their MLS pictures. Sure, they have a disclaimer (most of the time) but at a thumbnail size as the lead image, it’s not possible to see it’s AI. Which leads to clicking on a complete BS listing.
At some point I hope we as a society stop trusting anything we see online. It's fake, slop, generated bullshit in most cases and only getting worse.
But this is incredibly bad for commerce when online has already destroyed offline commerce!
We should simply not let people do fraud. Some of the oldest laws define weight and measures for this reason.
This will be great for offline commerce. Swinging pendulum, meet the other way.
Or we could have our politicians and laws actually work for us. You should straight up be able to collect a bounty if you visit a property inspection and show the online photos are fake.
Well we've also decided we don't like enforcing the law. So we've got the worst outcome, theft, fraud, and general lawlessness everywhere and nobody willing to do anything about it.
And in this case, no I don't think a footnote "some photos may contain AI enhancements" at the bottom of the page in a low-contrast color is helpful.
Nothing like the bait and switch of a hardwood floor going from pristine in the AI photo to absolutely trash IRL
I would personally love to see an end to the universally existing bait-and-switch of brokers listing unavailable units just to get you on the phone, then when you contact them, saying "Oh sorry that unit just got rented (or sold), but, I have another one that might suit you"
AI “virtual” staged images are reasonably common on UK property websites now but they have to be labelled, it seems: probably advertising standards rules.
A college economics professor explained nyc rentals to our class and how people found them ending that they were following ambulances to see where people might have died. Shortage of space was his explanation.
To begin with, they should make it a legal requirement to list Condo vs Coop in listings, not "condo/coop". One is usually easier to get, the other pushes people thru discriminatory hoops that many profiles have no hopes of passing -- but get stuck in the theatre of process and formality (often not knowing the entire process is engineered to exclude them.)
Facebook marketplace driving me crazy lately. A lot of people post photos of antiques and other furniture with obvious AI staging. It’s hard to tell what is real and what isn’t. At least there I can just demand the normal photos. I know that isn’t the case with most rentals in NYC because it’s super competitive and already gated in ridiculous ways with brokers and real estate agents.
This goes beyond AI its about reducing information asymmetry in one of the largest markets in the economy. The markets work better when buyers and renters can precisely assess what they're paying for. AI just makes mis representation cheaper and more scalable.
While we're at it, this should cover products and food in general too. I hate it when I see a poster that clearly has AI-generated images of food and the actual food you get is nowhere near what they generated.
Or even if it's similar, it's still clearly staged to look more appealing than what you should be getting.
Everyone knows deceptive advertising is bad, but somehow those who use AI for advertising turned their brains off on this topic because the images looked cooler than what they'd normally produce with a camera.
You realize that food photography for decades essentially did the same thing? No Burger ever served at McDonalds has ever matched the looks of their advertising, nor is the actual prop-thing that was photographed remotely eatable. There exists an entire form of mastery around this work.
Food photography is regulated; they have to show the actual product being sold.
They just pay a lot more attention to the presentation; pick the nicest bit of lettuce, the ripest tomato, place everything with care.
Stuff you aren't selling can be props, like Elmer's glue for milk in a cereal ad. It won't fly in a milk ad, though.
Without any consequences, it will just go on as before.
And he only seems to be calling for disclosure, which isn't worth a damn, and can be put into some nearly unreadable print.
I think this is common sense. You have what you have, not an alternative universe.
Wait, this seems to be just about _disclosing_ the use of AI?
So realtor websites will get a tiny footer saying "image experience may be enhanced with AI"
(note my skilled use of "may" which actually means "are always 100% of the time"... ugh i hate it so much)
Doesn't this already fall under consumer protection laws? False advertisement & consumer fraud.
Consumer protections aren't as fundamental and straightforward in the USA compared to most of the developed world.
It does. This isn't new laws, it's an application of existing law on this practice.
I think this could be something where the middle ground is the best option, this being, just make the rule that any listing with a picture that includes GenAI must also include the original un-AI’d photo right before it. This allows the lister to present the place as it is (important to the renter) and how it could be (important to the lister). I don’t think everything needs to be black and white
That's actually more aggressive than the rule as it exists, which merely requires that AI-modified listing photos be labeled as such.
Hopefully that will serve as a virtuous example.
Please pass that law in France too.
I'm generally a fan of laissez-faire.
But it's refreshing to see common-sense policies being implemented.
Like another comment posted: platform failures need higher-level (govt. in this case) intervention.
i love this rule, but then again everything i agree with is 'common sense' to me!
How does this work? Seems more like a law but cities dont have legislatures. Or … ?
Cities in the US can pass laws. They're called local ordinances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_ordinance#United_States
And the mayor just writes them?
It depends on the municipality.
Usually, local laws are enacted by a city council with members elected to represent different areas of a municipality (and potentially some at-large seats). Legislation can come from a number of places: lobbying efforts (for example, there's a current effort for municipalities to ban data center development), citizen groups, specially formed committees (my city just had one to create and propose city charter revisions), or yes, occasionally the council members themselves. Typically, there are open council meetings where citizens can discuss their opinions.
In addition, some rules/regulations/taxes are directly put to a vote of the city/town population, and some regulations can be put in place by administrative departments in a locality. (Similar to things like EPA regulations on the federal level).
The specific implementations vary in accordance to municipal charters and how specific states handle the incorporation of local governments.
It works because they are allowed to by the state, by a process specified by the state. The rules and ordinances of a county or municipality are subordinate to the laws of the state that granted them existence in the first place. There's a lot variety in "by a process specified by the state", which results in different structures: commissions, charters, mayoralties with councils, and more.
Cities have city councils that pass laws.
This likely doesn't even require a new law. There is probably an existing law against deceptive advertising in renting. This is just the mayor announcing that he will interpret the existing law to cover AI generated staging images.
well, reading the article Mamdani is cracking down on "deceptive landlord practices" thus it means his administration will apply deceptive landlord practice laws to use of AI images in advertising apartments. At some point if somebody wants to fight the issue they can take it to court.
As a general rule you probably don't need new laws to penalize behavior you think should be penalized, there are more than enough laws where a good faith interpretation would fit.
I'm not sure why you're downvoted. Many cities have a housing department and they can write and update regulations and requirements (within the scope of their legislatively-granted authority) that have the force of law. Things get set up this way so legislative bodies don't have to write and vote on every detail of every rule.
It's possible someone might challenge a rule if they think it oversteps the authority granted.
yeah me neither, maybe it was using the phrase good faith.
I suppose landlords if they think it is very beneficial to use AI to get people to pay more for apartments might fight back, probably free speech or some such thing, some landlords might just do it because they dislike Mamdani.
Anyway I'm not sure if they would need to update much, just issue statement "using AI to create an image that cannot actually happen in reality for an apartment by.. (long winded description follows) is obviously deceptive and falls under current regulations and laws and we will be prosecuting it as such" - this would of course be determined by how things work in NY specifically.
I think it is basically just signaling to the county DA's as to what they ought to consider when seeking out blatant cases of rental fraud; the laws already exist in the deceptive practices code...
I think an actual law does have to be passed to enact the part literally banning all AI imagery on a five boroughs basis, as opposed to just penalizing inaccurate AI genned imagery... which afaik is municipality based. Pretty sure the City Council needs to codify that.
Not sure who would be responsible for enforcing it on pretty much every site in the world that isn't just the real estate broker or building management/etc, though. Would places like rent.com be legally responsible?
Are protections really this weak in New York?
Where I live even using Photoshop for real estate advertisements is illegal, nevermind AI.
A real estate photographer described the typical job as taking 15 photos of the same living room while moving a softbox around and then merging the layers in Photoshop. No Photoshop would be like no copy pasting permitted while writing code.
What’s the point though? To save prospective renters time?
I’ve lived here for 30+ years, rented for more than 20 and why would anyone ever rent an apartment without seeing it in person?
That being said, IANAL but I imagine the rule is fully legal. The city already mandates a host of things: if the listing markets something as a 3BR, it needs to have 3 rooms bigger than 80 sq feet, each with an exterior window. If they say 3BR and it needs a wall to created the 3rd BR they have to put it up. If it says 2BR convertible 3BR, you might have to pay to have it put up.
Students, out of state, and other groups may sign a lease sight unseen. Yeah its dumb but it does happen. Yes there is -some- reasonable assumption of risk, but not to the extent to allow blatant deceptive advertising.
It's also a big time waster I would assume, even if you are going to see places, and buries valid listings. Apartment catfishing...
you know what they say about stopped clocks
Mamdani is pretty much the opposite of a broken clock. Somehow he manages to deliver every single time.
They balance the budget?
Lmao, Mayor lives in dream land. Who's going to spend their days enforcing such a ban
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/services/for-the-public/nyc-agen...
> The New York City government employs a workforce of more than 280,000 full-time employees.
You know, I think they'll find a few.
Why is this even a new law?
Lying and fraudulent misrepresentation is already illegal. And "AI" is just fraudulent misrepresentation.
It seems to be a new crackdown within the terms of the existing law.
Shit, we're still doing photos? Do a video, make a gaussian splat of it, and do virtual walkthroughs. matterport but for cheap.
HN title is missing the operative word "secretly". The real title:
> Mayor Mamdani Says Landlords Can’t Secretly Use AI Images to Advertise Properties
The article contents align with the real title: you just disclose AI usage when advertising rentals.
Thanks. We’ve changed it to a more neutral title.
That kind of regulation has failed over and over. The obvious outcome is that every listing will have misleading AI "photos".
Define "failed".
If what ends up happening is that every listing has misleading AI photos but they have to disclose it, then also what ends up happening is nobody trusts them anymore. Consumers will know by default to not trust the photos.
In my eyes, thats a win since that's a better outcome than them secretly using AI photos.
Of course in my ideal world it would be outlawed altogether, But even if they were still allowed to use AI photos but were forced to disclose it, that's still a good first step.
What?
Is your claim that every photo will be labeled as AI-modified, or that people won't label AI-modified images? If the latter, just penalize the listing agents. Trivial.
The entire issue is that the platforms are already inundated with misleading, unlabeled AI-modified images.
Every photo will be AI-enhanced and correctly labeled as such.
Just like every Web site has a cookie warning.
Analysis on steam shows not all games have the AI tag, and games which do sell measurably worse.
If that ends up happening, then the next step would be for the platform to derank listings that contain AI-enhanced photos, to set the proper incentive. That would be up to the platform to enforce, though.
What incentive does the platform have to do this? Ostensibly, the agents/landlords are the ones who pay, so you're asking the platform to bite the hands that feed it.
It's not "if." My mother-in-law is a realtor. She has a storage locker full of furniture for staging. I guarantee that the monthly cost of that locker, plus the cost of moving the furniture in and out of every property is an order of magnitude more expensive than whatever tool is doing the AI fake staging. The cost savings are too attractive.
And it's no doubt smaller-than-typical furniture so the rooms look more roomy..
If platform cared they would have fixed problems already.
The platform can't fix what the platform is unaware of.
This site doesn't. Many don't.
The sites that do have cookie banners tend to be the unbearable websites with 500 adverts, a full screen modal asking to sign up to the newsletter and redirecting you 30 times because you scrolled and touched the wrong element.
so therefore don't create laws or pass city ordinances? I don't understand your logic.
If you want a particular outcome, legislate that outcome.
> If the latter, just penalize the listing agents. Trivial.
It's very unlikely to be trivial though because the state typically lacks the resources required to enforce things like this at scale. You'll need to find violators, meet a burden of proof that they violated the law, notify them, give them the right to defend themsleves against the allegation, etc.
They'll almost certainly spend more time and money on the process than is ever collected if this ever happens.
> They'll almost certainly spend more time and money on the process than is ever collected if this ever happens.
The point of regulation isn't for the state to turn a profit. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that regulations that drive a monetary profit for the state are generally bad because they create a perverse incentive. For example, municipal governments adversely affect traffic flow by lowering speed limits because those lower speed limits generate more ticket revenue.
You're right that the point of regulation isn't to turn a "profit" but the laws of economics always apply. If you have a fine of $100 for a widespread practice that costs $1,000 to collect, the state isn't going to magically allocate resource to applying it.
You could create a private right of action for this, but that is its own bag of worms.
> If you have a fine of $100 for a widespread practice that costs $1,000 to collect, the state isn't going to magically allocate resource to applying it.
Seems empirically false given e.g. the immense investment we make in counter-drug enforcement.
> municipal governments adversely affect traffic flow by lowering speed limits because those lower speed limits generate more ticket revenue.
I don't know about the US because the US is weird, but:
* at 30kmph the rate of fatalities in case of a car hitting a pedestrian is basically 0%, at 50kmph I think it's 5% or more
* at 30kmph collisions are much easier to avoid due to the increased reaction time and the decreased braking distance (I don't remember the exact numbers)
* at 30kmph you can hold a conversation at normal speech levels next to a moderately busy road, at 50kmph you will have to shout (and not even notice it due to the high ambient noise)
Etc.
1. The point of laws is not to turn a profit on their enforcement
2. The burden of proof/right to defense/notifications etc are all quite a lot easier for licensed entities like real estate brokers – that's kind of the entire point of licensure
Please offer proof of that obviously false claim.
And? Anything else and it would be a first amendment violation.
No? There are many things you are not allowed to say when advertising, many ways in which you are not allowed to advertise. Fraud is not legal, and I have yet to see anyone make a free speech case for it.
Come on, there is no such thing as "trace amounts of AI" in a photo of a building.
There's a whole spectrum of things built into phone cameras these days like color correction and edge/sharpness enhancement where whether or not it's advertised as "AI" comes down to marketing.
Not that I like the idea of it, but I could see adding furniture to empty apartment photos. A furnished apartment probably sells better than an empty one.
Apartment advertisements are already doing this. With the caveat that the sense of scale (and literally everything about the apartment space tbh) can be entirely tampered with.
Oh yeah, this tiny apartment can definitely fit all this furniture. It’s not all ai generated at 2/3rds the size of any real furniture.
And photos of a furnished property give a better sense of the size of the space, and what can be done with it, than photos of empty rooms. (So long as the furnishings are sized realistically, of course.)
A floor plan with dimensions does that better. That should be mandatory for listings.
Yeah the wrong sizing is my main problem, I dont even care about minor cosmetic issues like wrong paint on a photo if its still size accurate.
You’ve clearly not used photoshop recently, hey?
Generative features are all over Photoshop and other image editors. Removing a coffee cup off a table is a pretty small use of AI that nobody would really object to
Ethical edits would be stuff you couldn't notice in the inspection. The coffee cup is fine because in the inspection that won't be there and isn't a part of the property anyway. If you use AI to remove the rust and calcium on the taps that is something you can inspect and prove was modified in a misleading way.
Requiring disclosure seems obvious.
Using AI for these pics is also not inherently deceptive though.
I live in an extremely overheated housing market where properties are usually sold/rented long before they actually get completed. I'm fine with landlords using AI in their renders to make claims about how the place will eventually look.
You also see people using AI to put furniture into the image (I assume they are also taking out the furniture that's actually there, belonging to the previous tenant, but doesn't fit their desired aesthetic). Again, nothing _inherently_ deceptive about this.
Main thing is just whether tenants are empowered to back out of the contract if they don't get what they were promised.
Anyone who e.g. uses AI to expand rooms/windows... Jail please.
Why not just put the floor plan with no photos then, or just photos of an empty room with white walls? I can imagine myself how a room _could_ look, what added value does your imagined version add?
Coz you want to know what flooring, doors, cupboards, bath, sinks, railings, windows, etc they are putting in.
I went to view a flat this week, it was a building site. That's still the most important bit coz you get a feel for the size and shape of the space which is what really matters. But I'm glad to have the AI renders too.
Mamdani will be sued. It's a 1st amendment issue.
False advertising does not have first amendment protection, surely. And requiring potentially misleading AI images to be labelled surely doesn’t infringe.
I am not a lawyer, but this seems unlikely. Federal law prohibits "false advertisement" which is understood to include misleading advertisements. Regulators can and do restrict certain types of commercial speech, and this kind of restriction has survived First Amendment challenge.
Isn't literally every photograph taken with a modern iPhone technically an "AI-generated / AI-edited image"?
Given that this would be the first ever law with any degree of ambiguity ever created, we should create some type of like... room... maybe call it a "court"... where people could "judge" whether a person fell on the allowable or disallowable end of the spectrum
It's a groundbreaking idea but it might work. And who knows, maybe it's an innovation we could apply to other areas of law in case they also ever need to interact with any ambiguity (which hasn't happened yet, of course).
it sounds a bit difficult to pull it off, but i'm all for it!> some type of like... room... maybe call it a "court"... where people could "judge" whether a person fell on the allowable or disallowable end
no, the photos you take with the lenses on your phone are not AI generated. They are generated from the sensors on your phone.
Have you seen some of these listings? We are talking about retaining walls invented where they can’t exist, work displayed that hasn’t occurred, etc. if you show up to a property and it’s materially different than the picture that got you there, that should be illegal.
If you want to make an argument that “everything is AI now” go for it. But I’m happy to see existing false advertising laws evolve as technology evolves
iPhones use a variety of AI (though not LLM) techniques every time you take a photo. For example they use semantic segmentation where they recognize different aspects of a photo (faces, skies, skin tones, etc) and process them differently
They do a sort of automatic Lightroom edit playing with colors, shadows and masking. They do not invent things that do not exist.
They absolutely do — see https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/samsung-galaxys-beloved-m...
Android phones sure. The iPhone as far as I have seen has stayed away from gimmicks and AI. "Computational photography" is a long shot away from AI generated images. Everything in the iphone photo actually existed much the same as the photo shows, it's just exposure and color being messed with.
If you use post editing tools like magic eraser and the new reframe / expand tools then that's a different story and shouldn't be allowed in real estate photography.
Yeah basically. They do not use generative AI or LLMs.
Unless you take into account their editing features that allow you to, for example, remove a human from an image
It's not as simple a question as you make it sound: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-galaxy...
If you take a photo of your apartment does your iPhone automatically make it twice the size, add modern renovations, paint the walls and add all new furnishings?
Yep. Most phones are doing computational photography mining images creating things that never where quite there.
Does your iPhone edit the image such that it’s substantially deceptive regarding the quality of the apartment to a reasonable person?
How often would you say you prompt your camera to líe about you in a bid to rent yourself
Is that not analogous to putting up a facetuned image on a dating profile?
Yes clearly that is what is meant here.
Love the guy but let’s try something that doesn’t restrict freedom of the press!
We love restricting our enemies, but there are better ways.
I propose banning rent at all!
..freedom of the press?
Freezes rents but not taxes. Landlords take inventory offline. Studios at $5500. 1 beds at $7500. Yea, he's a real genius of his own mind.
> Studios at $5500. 1 beds at $7500.
Zillow quotes: "The average rent for all bedrooms and all property types in New York, NY is $3,710."
Where are your figures sourced from?
So a landlord would rather not have income from an expensive deprecating asset?
There are no landlords in NYC anymore, since they all fled when Mamdani was elected.
I'm assuming "AI images" means realtors using AI to stage empty rooms with furniture.
I'm honestly fine with that as long as it's labeled.
Having just done an apartment search a few months ago, AI staged images are surprisingly good quality. It's difficult to detect it as AI when going through a bunch of listings quickly. But yea, I guess it can cause confusion if it sticks a Peloton (or whatever) in a space where it won't actually fit.
I just moved into a new apartment and tried using AI for layout inspiration. Every single attempt expanded the room, shrunk furniture, and even changed where walls were.
Landlords should not be using tools to stage units, it's going to lead to false expectations on the size of apartments.
There are software tools made specifically for staging (and de-staging!) real estate photos. I don't know if they're using off-the-shelf image models or not, but they have capabilities like restricting changes to specific regions of the image which aren't available in services like ChatGPT.
(De-staging is a particularly neat trick - if a property still has some of the current tenant's belongings in it, an AI model can remove those items to show what the room would look like empty.)
The listings I saw with AI staging usually alternated photos, 1 photo unstaged, the next photo staged.
Which meant you could toggle between the staged and unstaged photo. I didn’t notice any warping or distortion.
Yeah. With CAD models, every single trick I have tried to make photo mock-ups with an AI image-to-image conversion, whether using a line art or canny edge detector or just a shaded source object, has seen the AI ultimately ignore the cues in some generations, no matter what I do, and I would expect it to work a lot better with room photography.
In the 1960s Campbells Soup got in trouble with the FTC for using marbles to raise the ingredients and make the soup look fuller than it was. This was the real standard for deceptive advertising.
I dont care about simulating furniture placement specifically, but most use of AI in advertising that I see today would not be acceptable under that standard.
I would love to see that statement backed up with data. If you look at the other comments they are talking about more than just furniture
Yeah on second read I realize my comment was unclear; I don’t think this is okay. Fixed.
AI images being able to deceive you isn’t justification, if anything it’s the opposite. The staged furniture is there to help you visualise the size of the room. While AI furniture tricks you while not accurately representing the room size and layout.