As Revolutionary As ChatGPT Is, Real Estate Still Needs Real People

Amidst warnings from scientists and engineers that artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing more quickly than the resolution of ethical control issues surrounding it, ChatGPT has arrived in the residential real estate universe. Agents countrywide have begun using it to write listing descriptions and assemble pitch packages. Just last week, one of our New York agents reported assembling a co-op board package in which two of the reference letters were drafted by ChatGPT. What’s more, she said, they weren’t bad!

The pace of life-changing innovation accelerates with each generation. The Industrial Revolution, during the first half of the 19^th century, mechanized processes that had not changed for literally thousands of years. Human and/or animal labor was behind the production of everything: food, clothing, travel, books. With the advent of the steam engine, boats became engine driven. Factories began to make cloth and clothing. Trains enabled people and goods to travel long distances at formerly unimaginable speeds.