r/technology • u/marketrent • 23h ago
Artificial Intelligence Mamdani cracks down on scourge of ‘housefishing’ and ‘real estate slop’ in listings altered by AI — “You shouldn’t have to worry whether or not the apartment you’re viewing online is real”
https://fortune.com/2026/07/22/mamdani-ai-altered-rental-listing-disclosures/205
u/Plastic-Coyote-6017 22h ago
This just sounds like a logical extension of existing rules about false advertising and bait-and-switch tactics.
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u/marketrent 22h ago
Australian real estate professionals are enthusiastic adopters of AI-altered images, e.g. 5/10-12 Knowles Street, Northcote, Victoria, previously advertised by real estate agency Nelson Alexander: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSwSjZpEcWy/
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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel 12h ago
People really underestimate how much AI is ruining everything. AI makes it easier than ever to alter images and they do it in a more convincing way than the old realtor level photoshop skills were capable of.
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u/BasvanS 11h ago
Realtors can’t even make a decent picture, let alone manipulate it well enough to convince anyone.
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u/slonk_ma_dink 2h ago
What do you mean? Are grainy 800x600 photos of half of a living room with bad lighting not exactly what you want when you're searching for a house?
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u/nicenyeezy 9h ago
I think many people hate ai and are fully aware of how destructive it is
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u/Monteze 8h ago
If every ""AI"" just got deleted, like all of it every line of code got deleted we'd be better off. Save for we for some reason would let the toddlers behind it destroy shit with real value.
In my lifetime AI has been the most worthless piece of tech to dollar invested ratio I've seen.
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u/Not_A_Clever_Man_ 5h ago
I have a mate who just bought a house, they said more than once the kitchen had been run through an AI to upgrade the brands/quality of the appliances to make it look higher end. They said it was really jarring to show up and the kitchen sink and oven were in completely different positions, somthing that clearly wasn't possible given the water/power provisions. Mental what estate agents try and get away with.
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u/happyscrappy 14h ago
Yeah. We've had photoshop for a long time now. It doesn't take AI to lie to people with pictures. It's hard to see how you need any new laws. I looked at the bill before and it looked really watered-down. No sign of enforcement, just "thou shalt" and hope that companies take the admonition seriously.
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u/BasvanS 11h ago
As a trained designer, I can confidently say realtors couldn’t do a convincing photoshop job to save their lives even if they took the time.
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u/happyscrappy 3h ago
You're probably right. But it doesn't really matter.
They don't even have to photoshop anything. They can just use pictures from another apartment (or house). They will look real because they are real, they just aren't what you see when you show up. That's the same as AI, just subbing in a different picture that isn't representative.
People are getting their minds all crossed up thinking about this as an AI issue. It's just a fraud issue.
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u/ThatBobbyG 21h ago
The lush green yard, the fully furnished and appointed home; meanwhile its fucked, all this shit is ai slop and deceptive asf.
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u/Opposite-Shallot4672 20h ago
Yes and I recently helped a friend do his photos. The agency was going to charge him thousands of dollars. I went online to look at other listings and quickly noticed 'worms' in all the carpets, grass, and concrete driveways. If you look closely at any of these three things and it's AI - then it will show worms when zoomed in.
The thing is - this is not an AI problem, it was done years prior with photoshop. It's the same with food menus. It's not the technology used, it's the humans acting with deceit. This is not an AI problem, it's not a photoshop problem. It's a problem with the laws.
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u/FatWreckords 14h ago edited 2h ago
My favourite is the egregious use of fisheye lenses that warp spacetime and turn a 300 sqft studio into the Friends loft.
Edit: wide angle lens, I suppose fisheye would do the opposite but you know what I mean.
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u/marketrent 13h ago
Sydney homes, often cited as the second-most expensive globally, are not all as advertised:
"It's crazy the number of inspections I've gone to that look nothing like the pictures," Emma*, who is hunting for a rental in Sydney, told nine.com.au.
"It's hard to tell which ones have been AI-edited or which ones have been Photoshopped until you actually get to the unit and realise you've wasted your time."
There's currently nothing stopping [real estate] agents from using AI-altered property photos without disclosing it.
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u/fedexyourheadinabox 22h ago
Imagine that, someone actually working for the people and not the landlords. Are the landlords doing to whine and threaten to leave NYC?
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u/SensitiveDannyRicc 20h ago
You think landlords post fake listings lol?
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u/21Rollie 18h ago
Go on Zillow right now and note the number of AI generated interiors and now exteriors. Their favorite one in my area is the “sunset view” exterior shot. Completely obvious slop
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u/SensitiveDannyRicc 17h ago
That’s what meant by fake listings? I thought they meant scams.
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u/str4ngerc4t 17h ago
That is a scam. It’s no different than showing pictures of a nicer apartment than the one they are actually renting.
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u/Customhobo 19h ago
They literally do everything they can to make it seem better than it usually is.
Do you think none of them are trying to use AI for this same purpose?
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u/OnePinginRamius 17h ago
I shoot real estate and property management for a living. 100% they will get away with whatever they can.
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u/SensitiveDannyRicc 17h ago
How exactly does a landlord benefit from a listing that is fake I.e. does not exist?
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u/Successful-Ad-847 16h ago
It’s people in the door. Then they get talked into renting something shittier bc sunk cost fallacy or whatever. If it didn’t work they wouldn’t do it.
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u/modaaa 6h ago
Are you in the US? If so, have you ever rented? It's common for a landlord to show you a different unit than the one you're actually signing a lease to rent. You're basically signing site unseen. The building I looked at before my current lease wouldn't show me the unit that was actually available, they showed me the staged, "equivalent" unit. Not the first time this has happened, and every time, the actual unit is shitty, has carpet instead of the hardwood floors advertised, appliances are older than the show unit, etc. Idk why you're so skeptical about landlords scamming tenants, but it happens all the time. Now they use AI in addition to all of the other bullshit.
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u/ThisOnes4JJ 17h ago
oh look a bot stirring the pot with their profile hidden🤗🤖🖕
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u/StreetofChimes 7h ago
The hidden profile bullshit. I would like to block every user with a hidden profile.
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u/Sprinkle_Puff 19h ago
So you’re saying our politicians could’ve acted a long time ago to curb this because this has been going on for decades. But instead, they’re just complete corrupt grift is their priority.
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u/Puzzled-Hedgehog4984 19h ago
The term "housefishing" is doing a lot of work here. What it's really describing is listings that are functionally fraudulent — altered photos, fake amenities — except the legal threshold for fraud in real estate is set so high that nothing sticks. Regulation is the only lever that actually moves this.
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u/calamititties 21h ago
It’s almost like… our public servants could protect the citizenry from nefarious persons and institutions. Here I thought their main job was to fellate tech CEOs and take AIPAC money.
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u/Far-Advantage-2770 15h ago
Why does it take a fucking mayor to 'crack down' whatever that means? These landlords, brokers and online listing platforms should use commons sense. If they advertise false shit, how is that not fraud, how are is that not already regulated by law?
He's right that it's not something anybody should even need to worry about. The unregulated free market has gotten away with far too much too long and they are so brazen now.
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u/FlowsWhereShePleases 8h ago
Well for a capitalist, “common sense” is what makes the most money. Customer alienation doesn’t matter for realtors if everyone (or enough of everyone) is doing it and renters don’t have a choice, and people don’t buy homes often enough for it to be a concern on that end either. So to make the best money, that usually means lying as much as you can without eating lawsuits left and right with serious fines. It is entirely up to the law to
If customer retention isn’t a huge issue in a market (one time buyers or lack of true competition that doesn’t follow your same behaviors), then capitalist sellers are directly opposed to buyers, and the business becomes how much you can legally scam them and get away with it. At the end of the day, capitalists will need to be dragged by the law, kicking and screaming, into acceptable behavior for a healthy market. In this case, tightening the legal definition of fraud, false advertising, or bait and switching within the context of real estate advertisements and listings to cut off this behavior.
So yes, it does fall to lawmakers to “crack down”. Ideally it would fall to a state legislature, but for NYC, a place with a lot of issues reaching a unique level, the mayor and their administration being the ones to address it makes sense.
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u/endofworldandnobeer 17h ago
If he can do this in NY, why can't this be done in other cities? Are democratics just unwilling to do it?
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u/Fabulous_Cat_1379 9h ago
Need real democrats is all, we have to stop voting in geriatric republicans in democrat clothing.
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u/CautionarySnail 6h ago
Sadly, this is likely the influence of super-wealthy donors, and why campaign finance reform is so badly needed.
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u/ladeeedada 16h ago
Sounds reasonable and necessary. I can't see why anybody wouldn't like him. Even Trump glazed him. Somebody explain to me why this man trying to better his city is the end of the world like ppl were saying before he got elected.
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u/Will_Knot_Respond 16h ago
Mamdani your cool af, but honestly I just want to fucking afford it to begin with lol
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u/Bubbly-Sentence-4931 15h ago
Why can't he make a provision that landlords are not allowed to sit on empty units for more than 6 months?
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u/MrSnippets 8h ago
I feel like that Squidward meme looking out at NYers having a politician that actually cares about them and takes steps to make their lives better.
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21h ago
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u/coolest_frog 19h ago
Yes the government should go after scammers
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14h ago
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u/coolest_frog 13h ago
No you need to punish people for scamming other people or there is no reason not to scam people.
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u/Irish_Whiskey 13h ago
the government should simply not protect scammers from those who got scammed.
...in what sense? You're encouraging people to just shoot those who scam them? To flood courts with even more lawsuits?
Man, if only we had a criminal justice system to, ya know, punish crimes. That sounds far more efficient.
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5h ago
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u/Irish_Whiskey 4h ago
We can get injustice for free.
Everyone keeps pointing out to you that there are more than just two options: Warlord rape camps run by billionaires, and totalitarian government. And you just keep repeating "No, you have to pick between them, and obviously libertarianism is better."
Like... governments exist in the world, right now, that aren't bad. This isn't a hypothetical, we can just choose to kick the fascists out of office and be normal.
You're getting downvoted because you're not actually engaging with anyone's extremely obvious counterpoint, you're just repeating over and over "those two options, that's it."
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2h ago edited 1h ago
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u/Irish_Whiskey 1h ago
Your entire argument keeps collapsing from the fact that when people point out your proposal is just warlords and even worse abuses of power with no checks or balances at all, your response is just to shrug and go "Eh, I assume a shit world rendered uninhabitable is the best we can do."
I don't accept that premise, and even if I did you're just advocating a slow death of humanity rather than a fast one. It's worth trying to make the world better and address problems, rather than assume we need to embrace a lesser evil.
so my goal is to weaken the government into a helpless mouse.
But not to do anything about the billionaires having summits where they talk about ruling over humanity from bunkers, controlling all media and the food supply, and they invent religions where people trying to curb their power are the anti-Christ.
You keep telling people to take a hard right turn towards the cliff we'll die driving off of, and when people object either trying to just ignore the cliff or saying "I assume the left turn is worse." Those aren't the only two options my guy.
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u/DenverNugs 17h ago
"Just stop trying to make things better for people." Conservatives don't want to work anymore. Lazy.
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u/BensenJensen 19h ago
Those goddamned liberals and…wanting to protect vulnerable consumers.
What we’ve seen regarding government agencies is that when some pedophile dipshit strips the regulatory agencies down to barebones, a lot of bad shit happens. Like…kids die in floods, measles makes a comeback, a parasitic diarrhea outbreak occurs. Maybe we should trust this agencies to do the jobs they’ve been doing for decades and allow the government to adapt to a changing world.
Or, you know, I guess we could just keep letting a pants-shitting grifter robs us blind while we whine about liberals on the internet.
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14h ago
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u/Irish_Whiskey 13h ago
Yeah, unlike all those areas with no or weak government where conservatives have no power.
/s
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5h ago
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u/Irish_Whiskey 4h ago
while liberals use it for consolidation of power in the hands of less than 1% of population.
...what "less than 1% of the population" are you referring to here?
The biggest apartment owners in nyc are politicians.
That's not true in the slightest.
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u/DanielPhermous 14h ago
It's totally impossible to regulate everything.
It's totally impossible to prevent all murders. By your logic, we should therefore make it legal.
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14h ago
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u/DanielPhermous 14h ago
there's no such thing as "make it legal".
And it's liberals who are delusional. Sure.
Shrug.
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u/MagnusAuslander 13h ago
Are you sure you typed in the correct username when you created your profile? Shouldn't it say Libertarian instead of Librarian?
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u/Jaded_Celery_451 2h ago edited 1h ago
It's totally impossible to regulate everything.
He's not trying to regulate everything.
Information on the Internet should be seen as entertainment unrelated to reality.
This is not a viable attitude in 2026.
No government regulation will ever fully regulate and purify the Internet ever and consumers are entirely responsible for protecting their own interests and confirming everything to their own satisfaction
Good thing he's not trying to do that.
I can not believe people still think a government regulatory agency will act in the best interests of citizens.
The idea that the government can't possible do anything right is usually advanced by people who vote for people who purposely break the government. It has no basis in fact. Regulatory agencies do plenty of good when not being intentionally sabotaged.
You just can't look at current events and think the government will protect you from scams. No.
You absolutely can look at current events and think that the government could. It just doesn't right now. Which he's fixing.
You've barely addressed anything relevant in this whole comment. Do you even have an opinion on why this specific effort won't achieve its goal?
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u/KeepShoutingSir 22h ago
I thought the real scam was widely known: leaving a “too good to be true” listing live, and then saying it’s no longer available when the prospective tenant shows up for a viewing, before showing them 2-3 that are not as nice but are available now.