Estate agents using photos altered by AI to sell houses is “another kind of slap in the face for buyers”, a property expert has argued. 

The practice is increasingly in common, with a plethora of extremely smart looking homes being advertised on property websites. 

However, viewers will find in real life that the house looks nothing like what is advertised and in fact needs a lot of tender loving care. 

On Lunchtime Live, Ciaran Mulqueen of the Crazy House Prices Instagram account admitted AI is “not the biggest problem” facing the housing market but said buyers are right to find it annoying. 

“That's always going to be down to a lack of supply,” he said. 

“No other industries and no other services or anything like that can falsely advertise - there's standards there. 

“If somebody is selling a vegetarian sandwich, they can't put meat in it. 

“Whereas with housing, it just seems like they can say and now show whatever they like and it's just ‘buyer beware’.”

Mr Mulqueen continued that what started with the photoshopping of blue skies has become much more serious under AI. 

“It's evolving into adding on extensions, putting in gardens that don't exist, this kind of thing,” he said. 

“Like I saw one where they had furniture in there that just physically would not fit in the room. 

“I guess that the justification is some people maybe are not able to visualise that themselves.

“I feel that's a bit very belittling of people; like people aren’t stupid, they know what can be done with a house.” 

Housing crisis

Overall, Mr Mulqueen argued that the practice is also unnecessary given how easy it is to sell houses in the current market. 

“It's just another kind of slap in the face for buyers when everything is, everything is stacked against buyers in this country,” he said. 

“There's very few new homes ever built for sale, there's so many issues in the housing market.

“This is just another one of those things lumped onto homebuyers.”

Main image: An AI generated image of a house.