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This 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.

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.

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.

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.

There's several other areas that would be good to categorically ban AI usage from:

  - gambling
  - dating
  - hiring
  - advertising
It shouldn't even be controversial that this would be broadly good for society.

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.

You trust AI with dating?
Does basic photoshop count as AI usage...? What about changing color balance, dynamic range, etc?
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.

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.
Isn’t the more thorough solution banning deceptive product advertising?

It feels like this is already a whole thing that should already be solved.

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?

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)

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.
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.
Doesn't this already fall under consumer protection laws? False advertisement & consumer fraud.
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.
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.

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.)
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.
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.

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.
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.

Are protections really this weak in New York?

Where I live even using Photoshop for real estate advertisements is illegal, nevermind AI.

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
I think this is common sense. You have what you have, not an alternative universe.
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.

How does this work? Seems more like a law but cities dont have legislatures. Or … ?
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.

Shit, we're still doing photos? Do a video, make a gaussian splat of it, and do virtual walkthroughs. matterport but for cheap.
Why is this even a new law?

Lying and fraudulent misrepresentation is already illegal. And "AI" is just fraudulent misrepresentation.

you know what they say about stopped clocks
Lmao, Mayor lives in dream land. Who's going to spend their days enforcing such a ban
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.

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.

Mamdani will be sued. It's a 1st amendment issue.
Isn't literally every photograph taken with a modern iPhone technically an "AI-generated / AI-edited image"?
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!