Renters and home buyers are seeing AI-‘enhanced’ property photos. Now NSW is changing the rules

A Queensland property listing featuring AI imagery on the left, and reality of the same room on the right. realestate.com.au A photograph of a house is supposed to tell you what a house looks like.

That sounds obvious.

But increasingly, it’s becoming a question, rather than a fact.

Real estate agents are using artificial intelligence (AI) to brighten rooms, add furniture, improve gardens, remove unattractive elements and, in some cases, create features that don’t even exist.

The practice has even been given a new name, “ housefishing ”.

From 2027, New South Wales will require real estate agents to disclose when images in rental advertisements have been digitally altered, or generated using AI, where they could mislead prospective tenants.

Should other states follow suit? Does the garden even exist? Photography has never been an entirely neutral record of reality.

Photographers choose the angle, the lens, the time of day, the lighting, and what is in the frame.

Digital editing tools such as Photoshop have been around for decades.

A wide-angle lens can make a room look bigger, while editing can make a garden look greener.

AI, then, seems to simply be the next step.

The nuance here is that generative AI actually moves beyond simply improving a photograph to constructing a kind of plausible alternative reality.

In other words, AI can move very quickly from making a garden look greener to creating a garden that doesn’t actually exist.

So, the obvious regulatory response is disclosure.