Hacker News Reader

Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

That kind of regulation has failed over and over. The obvious outcome is that every listing will have misleading AI "photos".

View on HN

Define "failed".

If what ends up happening is that every listing has misleading AI photos but they have to disclose it, then also what ends up happening is nobody trusts them anymore. Consumers will know by default to not trust the photos.

In my eyes, thats a win since that's a better outcome than them secretly using AI photos.

Of course in my ideal world it would be outlawed altogether, But even if they were still allowed to use AI photos but were forced to disclose it, that's still a good first step.

What?

Is your claim that every photo will be labeled as AI-modified, or that people won't label AI-modified images? If the latter, just penalize the listing agents. Trivial.

The entire issue is that the platforms are already inundated with misleading, unlabeled AI-modified images.

Every photo will be AI-enhanced and correctly labeled as such.

Just like every Web site has a cookie warning.

Analysis on steam shows not all games have the AI tag, and games which do sell measurably worse.

so therefore don't create laws or pass city ordinances? I don't understand your logic.

If you want a particular outcome, legislate that outcome.

This site doesn't. Many don't.

The sites that do have cookie banners tend to be the unbearable websites with 500 adverts, a full screen modal asking to sign up to the newsletter and redirecting you 30 times because you scrolled and touched the wrong element.

If that ends up happening, then the next step would be for the platform to derank listings that contain AI-enhanced photos, to set the proper incentive. That would be up to the platform to enforce, though.

What incentive does the platform have to do this? Ostensibly, the agents/landlords are the ones who pay, so you're asking the platform to bite the hands that feed it.

If platform cared they would have fixed problems already.

The platform can't fix what the platform is unaware of.

It's not "if." My mother-in-law is a realtor. She has a storage locker full of furniture for staging. I guarantee that the monthly cost of that locker, plus the cost of moving the furniture in and out of every property is an order of magnitude more expensive than whatever tool is doing the AI fake staging. The cost savings are too attractive.

And it's no doubt smaller-than-typical furniture so the rooms look more roomy..

> 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 process than is ever collected if this ever happens.

> 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 because those lower speed limits generate more ticket revenue.

You're right that the point of regulation isn't to turn a "profit" but the laws of economics always apply. If you have a fine of $100 for a widespread practice that costs $1,000 to collect, the state isn't going to magically allocate resource to applying it.

You could create a private right of action for this, but that is its own bag of worms.

> If you have a fine of $100 for a widespread practice that costs $1,000 to collect, the state isn't going to magically allocate resource to applying it.

Seems empirically false given e.g. the immense investment we make in counter-drug enforcement.

You're ignoring how much money and power is found in the drug enforcement industrial complex. The point of drug enforcement is not to stop the drug trade.

> 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.

1. The point of laws is not to turn a profit on their enforcement

2. The burden of proof/right to defense/notifications etc are all quite a lot easier for licensed entities like real estate brokers – that's kind of the entire point of licensure

Please offer proof of that obviously false claim.

Come on, there is no such thing as "trace amounts of AI" in a photo of a building.

Not that I like the idea of it, but I could see adding furniture to empty apartment photos. A furnished apartment probably sells better than an empty one.

And photos of a furnished property give a better sense of the size of the space, and what can be done with it, than photos of empty rooms. (So long as the furnishings are sized realistically, of course.)

Yeah the wrong sizing is my main problem, I dont even care about minor cosmetic issues like wrong paint on a photo if its still size accurate.

A floor plan with dimensions does that better. That should be mandatory for listings.

Apartment advertisements are already doing this. With the caveat that the sense of scale (and literally everything about the apartment space tbh) can be entirely tampered with.

Oh yeah, this tiny apartment can definitely fit all this furniture. It’s not all ai generated at 2/3rds the size of any real furniture.

You’ve clearly not used photoshop recently, hey?

Generative features are all over Photoshop and other image editors. Removing a coffee cup off a table is a pretty small use of AI that nobody would really object to

Ethical edits would be stuff you couldn't notice in the inspection. The coffee cup is fine because in the inspection that won't be there and isn't a part of the property anyway. If you use AI to remove the rust and calcium on the taps that is something you can inspect and prove was modified in a misleading way.

There's a whole spectrum of things built into phone cameras these days like color correction and edge/sharpness enhancement where whether or not it's advertised as "AI" comes down to marketing.

And? Anything else and it would be a first amendment violation.

No? There are many things you are not allowed to say when advertising, many ways in which you are not allowed to advertise. Fraud is not legal, and I have yet to see anyone make a free speech case for it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com