Apartment hunting has long required looking past flattering camera angles and carefully staged rooms. Now, renters may also have to question whether what they’re seeing is altered by AI.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on July 16 proposed requiring landlords, brokers and online listing platforms to disclose when rental listing photos or videos have been created using AI or digitally altered with AI or other digital tools.
“You shouldn’t have to worry whether or not the apartment you’re viewing online is real,” Mamdani said while announcing the proposal at Manhattan’s Tenement Museum. “After all, it’s called StreetEasy, not StreetHard.”
The proposal is part of the city’s Rental Ripoff Report, a package of 23 tenant-protection initiatives unveiled after officials gathered testimony from more than 2,400 renters during a series of “Rental Ripoff Hearings” held across the city’s five boroughs earlier this year.
This effort comes as generative AI is making convincing real estate listing images faster and easier to produce, raising new concerns about transparency in online housing marketplaces.
