Embracing artificial intelligence (AI) is more than staying ahead of technology. It’s also about enhancing our ability to make better-informed decisions driven by data, enabling personalized customer experiences at scale, and exploiting extraordinary productivity gains both for MLS staff as well as brokers and agents.
Most people are not aware that they have been using AI in different forms well before the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Nevertheless, the public launch and democratization of Generative AI turned real estate professionals, who have historically been known to lag in technology adoption, into technology-forward leaders. Unlike the concepts of metaverse (remember that?), AI offers immediately realizable benefits, especially in creative tasks, which are generally difficult and time-consuming. Coupled with even higher AI adoption across their clientele, real estate professionals must continue embracing AI to remain local market and industry experts.
Consequently, this means MLSs need to be able to offer products and services that leverage AI to give brokers and agents time back while allowing them to focus on the more human aspects of their work: building and strengthening the relationship with their customers and understanding their clients’ needs.
With the advent of AI, data is even more so the proverbial “new oil.” MLSs can take advantage of existing data sets such as images and videos, but also explore new data layers, such as voice information to empower agents to become supercharged market experts and empowered salespeople. These new data frontiers are opening up exciting possibilities for homebuyers: Instead of filtering by predetermined criteria, a homebuyer can search in their own language, on their own terms and with the ability to truly search for everything made available by listing agents. MLSs have an opportunity here by offering agents the easiest way to create and add these additional data sets.
AI and emerging tools, however, do not distinguish between good and malicious intent—this power can be wielded by anyone and thus empower bad actors who create more confusion and distrust in society with deepfakes and misinformation. It is up to brokers and agents to be the source of trust with insights and local knowledge where skepticism is the new normal. And in similar ways, MLSs have a responsibility to guide brokers and agents through the AI noise by offering tools and services with intent, clarity and transparency.
AI fundamentally has already changed the way we do business in real estate and will continue to drive innovation. And as the world is evolving, you must be able to evolve with it and embrace AI to use this technology to your advantage.
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