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NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

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171–180 of 285 posts

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is square footage on many NYC listings, but it’s wrong. They often have the square footage of the total area occupied by the apartment, including all the interior walls and columns that can take 20% of the area away.

Don't forget about those common areas too! I've seen many cases where hallways, elevators, and stairwells were included in the square footage numbers.

The normal definition of square footage I've seen typically includes hallways and stairs. (Though often not garages.)

Personally, I wish we would normalize including exact floor plans with measurements.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget about those common areas too! I've seen many cases where hallways, elevators, and stairwells were included in the square footage numbers.

The normal definition of square footage I've seen typically includes hallways and stairs. (Though often not garages.) Personally, I wish we would normalize including exact floor plans with measurements.

They mean the apartment building hallways and elevators. As in, if you summed the square footage of all the apartments on a floor, you'd get a number greater than the actual dimensions of the floor, because the common areas are counted multiple times.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 apartme…

There is square footage on many NYC listings, but it’s wrong. They often have the square footage of the total area occupied by the apartment, including all the interior walls and columns that can take 20% of the area away.

I didn’t know the square footage of my apartment until I had built an app that utilizes LiDAR to actually measure it. Broker told me 650 square feet - it’s precisely 505 square feet.

(Won’t advertise my app, but you can find many on the iOS App Store).

Would be nice for StreetEasy to have some kind of third party verification about apartment size claims.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#174
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iPhones use a variety of AI (though not LLM) techniques every time you take a photo. For example they use semantic segmentation where they recognize different aspects of a photo (faces, skies, skin tones, etc) and process them differently

They do a sort of automatic Lightroom edit playing with colors, shadows and masking. They do not invent things that do not exist.

Yeah basically. They do not use generative AI or LLMs.

Unless you take into account their editing features that allow you to, for example, remove a human from an image

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#175
post #5

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)

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.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it you are a lawyer specializing in NY real estate law, then? Would be interesting to hear a more detailed analysis if so.

The law applies to everyone, so it's reasonable for everyone to try to understand it, not just attorneys. Similarly, it's fine for people to have opinions on food, dental hygiene, and the tax code without being a chef, a dentist, and an accountant.

I thought it was illegal in new york (and probably the rest of the us) to give legal advice if not a lawyer.

And in my understanding interpreting the law as opposed to just reciting it constitutes legal advice.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the latter, just penalize the listing agents. Trivial. It's very unlikely to be trivial though because the state typically lacks the resources required to enforce things like this at scale. You'll need to find violators, meet a burden of proof that they violated the law, notify them, give them the right to defend themsleves against the allegation, etc. They'll almost certainly spend more time and money on the pr…

> They'll almost certainly spend more time and money on the process than is ever collected if this ever happens. The point of regulation isn't for the state to turn a profit. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that regulations that drive a monetary profit for the state are generally bad because they create a perverse incentive. For example, municipal governments adversely affect traffic flow by lowering speed limits be…

> municipal governments adversely affect traffic flow by lowering speed limits because those lower speed limits generate more ticket revenue.

I don't know about the US because the US is weird, but:

* at 30kmph the rate of fatalities in case of a car hitting a pedestrian is basically 0%, at 50kmph I think it's 5% or more

* at 30kmph collisions are much easier to avoid due to the increased reaction time and the decreased braking distance (I don't remember the exact numbers)

* at 30kmph you can hold a conversation at normal speech levels next to a moderately busy road, at 50kmph you will have to shout (and not even notice it due to the high ambient noise)

Etc.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#178
post #169
post #2

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.

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…

> Food advertising has used fake images forever, but it's okay because you know the meatballs don't look like that.

Highly disagree. Color retouch or ambience or effects, sure. But changing shape, size, base color and perhaps some other things is deceit. Japan can do this, other countries should able too

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#179

Isn’t the more thorough solution banning deceptive product advertising? It feels like this is already a whole thing that should already be solved.

Probably starts with the most egregious offenders first and then spreads. It'll be interesting to see if other communities follow suite.

Re: NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

#180
post #2

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.

You trust AI with dating?

Perhaps we need OP to explain "I fully trust AI with these things", because it is difficult to define trust in this sense. Yes of course the human motivation was always going to be the real "AI threat", and fraud (and a hugely increased spam volume) was always going to be the main route of AI damage to society.
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