Many of us have heard of the “wonders” of ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools being touted as tools for improving productivity and effortless communication.

While there may be a place for AI tools in some aspects of your work, the current reality is that they’re a long way from being reliable and safe enough to do the substantive work of real estate, such as producing contracts or marketing materials. If you’re going to use them, you need to understand their limitations and how to use them without putting yourself, and your reputation, at risk.

The basics of how AI tools work

Generative AI tools use an algorithm trained on massive data sets, typically aggregated from the internet, to create new content from a prompt entered by the user. These prompts can be text, images, audio, or video. The output or generated content may be text, images, audio, or video. Notably, the same prompt may generate wildly different content at different times.

The output can appear polished and convincing on the surface, but there are plenty of documented instances where the content produced has turned out to be wrong, biased, or even what’s known as “hallucinatory.” In these hallucinatory cases, the tool invents references that don’t exist, delivering content that is highly inaccurate. Because these tools can’t distinguish between fact and fiction, they’re no replacement for your reasoning or critical thinking.

Guidelines for AI tool use

If you do decide to try using a generative AI tool in your work, you’d be well advised to:

• Never enter confidential client information into an AI tool – It’s important to understand that any information you input into a generative AI tool may become part of its dataset and may be shown to other users or used in content generated for them. Inputting client information may be in breach of privacy law, in breach of your contractual or common law duties of care to your past or current clients, and in breach of the Real Estate Services Act, the Real Estate Services Regulation, or the Real Estate Services Rules.
• Don’t use an AI tool for contracts – AI tools are definitely not a replacement for standard form contracts and sample contractual clauses available from BCREA or your real estate board. These standard form contracts and sample clauses have been prepared by experienced lawyers and real estate professionals after careful consideration of the applicable law in this jurisdiction. Using contract language drafted by an AI tool would be a very risky proposition that could leave your clients with unexpected liability and leave you with a lawsuit or BCFSA complaint against you.
• Review the output carefully – Be even more careful than you would be in reviewing a new colleague’s work. For marketing content, you should ensure the content doesn’t contain misrepresentations about the property. Even minor errors can result in claims made against you and diminish your reputation for professionalism. Using AI tools to create or modify photographs can also amount to misrepresentation and may be against real estate board rules or regulations. Using content generated by an AI tool could also expose you to a breach of copyright claim if some of the content was originally ‘harvested’ by the tool from someone else’s intellectual property.

At E&O, we strongly recommend caution before using generative AI tools, and urge you to do a very careful review of any content produced by such tools. There is no substitute for your professional experience and critical thinking skills.