Real estate agents have been adopting AI image tools years before most industries had a strategy for them, for example virtual staging which takes minutes as opposed to days. It has the capability of making colour corrections that make a room look the way it was before three years of furniture accumulated. AI tools have been useful and agents have used them proactively in day-to-day workflows.
An area trailing is buyer-facing infrastructure between agents and portals, the point at which a buyer can know briefly whether the image they are looking at has been processed. Many portals have internal moderation, terms of service, and agent guidelines – but visible in-image disclosure for buyers isn’t as present across the industry – Global Property Portal Index seek to bridge that gap.
Coraly builds AI listing tools deployed by agents across several markets, and runs the Global Property Portal Index, an independent health benchmark which gives portals a continuing score, competitive benchmark, regulatory readiness assessment, and action playbook across 158 metrics and 400 signals.
According to data, one in fifteen images globally shows detectable AI enhancement. That average ranges a 77-fold range from the highest-rate portal to the lowest, and the pattern in that spread is worth reading carefully.
The portals at the top are there because they operate in markets where agents have embraced AI tools most thoroughly. The UAE’s off-plan development sector, the US’s competitive residential market, and Australia’s demanding listing environment.
Portals do not alter listing images, this is primarily by agents or photographers, or stagers working on behalf of agents. The portal’s role is in the moderation layer and asks whether they have the infrastructure to detect AI-processed images, and whether they give buyers any signal about what they are viewing. As most do not, this infrastructure gap index is designed to measure it.
Virtual staging has accounted for the biggest share of detected enhancements, and Sky replacement trails behind. The smallest category is object removal but it’s the most consequential as the removed object is something a buyer would want to know about.
“In a market like the UAE, where audiences come from diverse backgrounds with very different expectations around property presentation, this balance becomes even more important. Some buyers are used to highly staged visuals, while others prioritise raw accuracy.
“Platforms and marketers have a responsibility to navigate this spectrum thoughtfully.”
Sahar Khan, Vice President of Marketing and Communication, Bayut
Dubai’s off-plan development market can be seen as one of the world’s largest, and agents operating in it have used professional presentation tools, CGI renders, virtual staging and high-production photography, at scale for years. The CGI-adjusted figures shown strip out off-plan renders.
Agents enhancing listing images is not the issue – the dilemma is whether portals have built the infrastructure to give buyers any indication about what they are looking at.
For most of the last decade the legal question was simple – an agent must not mislead, this is now changing. The newer wave of rules are less concerned with who has made the edit and more concerned whether the buyer can see that an edit was made, and whether the original is a click away.
