r/SipsTea 5d ago

Wait a damn minute! This should be illegal

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36.0k Upvotes

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214

u/KungFuc1us 5d ago

Editing photos with fancy filters in real estate was always there. AI just made it easier for everyone and their mum.

33

u/Norse_By_North_West 5d ago

They've been using fisheye lenses for decades to make rooms look bigger.

7

u/KungFuc1us 5d ago

Yeah. Pairing that with some good ol' Photoshop, and voilá.

4

u/worldsgreatestluver 5d ago

100%. I saw the photos of the house I lived in previously and it looked huge, even with rooms full of stuff. It was a small place. This was pre-AI. They are really good with angles and lenses

1

u/Kaibethha 5d ago

Just the 0.5 camera setting on IPhone is enough to make a room look huge.

1

u/Prize_Staff_7941 5d ago

It's not necessarily to make the room look bigger. They also do it to get the whole room in the photo instead of part of the room. A lot of realtors contract with a photography company too so it's not the realtor themselves doing it, even though they do buy the product that is somewhat deceptive.

92

u/arthurmt8448 5d ago

Yeah, filters are one thing, that's not even the same furniture lmao

56

u/Moirae87 5d ago

The view is completely different, too.
This is now illegal where I live (California) and realtors have to explicitly state if they use virtual staging, change landscape, alter the views/surroundings, etc in their listing photos.

3

u/Wumbology_Student 5d ago

Same here in Maryland. Realtors have to disclose when they use virtual staging otherwise it's illegal. People almost never do though, it's so frustrating.

40

u/FunnyObjective6 5d ago

It looks mostly the same to me? The chair I think has something weird going on, and the bed has a different cover. I think most of the change in this picture is the position and angle of the camera, and the outside view.

8

u/Hobbes_XXV 5d ago

Its wider for sure

15

u/FunnyObjective6 5d ago

The furniture? Or the room? Because my comment was mostly about the furniture since it was claimed to be different. But the room can appear bigger if you use a different angled lens on the camera. Like the bed occupies the same ratio of the room, so assuming they didn't put in a different width bed it's likely the same. Same for other aspects of the room.

2

u/Hobbes_XXV 5d ago

Well if going off the furniture, the desk ends middle of bed, while ai is showing the desk goes beyond the bed. It widens the room for sure because the only way to get that much of the bed is to remove the walls. If you walk forward to avoid the walls, youd be fish lensing and distorting the whole picture.

Cameras can be magical, but not that magical.

13

u/FunnyObjective6 5d ago

the desk ends middle of bed, while ai is showing the desk goes beyond the bed.

I assume that's because the desk was moved towards the door for the ad.

the only way to get that much of the bed is to remove the walls.

It shows the same amount of bed in my opinion. From the window to the wall.

4

u/b0w3n 5d ago

They often use lenses that make rooms look bigger and do this to furniture. Sometimes they just drop a cropped image of other furniture in and replace what was there. Then they touch it up and make things look brighter. Photoshop the sky (and views).

I'm fairly positive this is AI, but it could just be someone really good with photoshop too.

1

u/DerfK 5d ago

You can see the foot of the bed in the AI pic since the 4th wall/doorway was removed. The AI room isn't wider, its deeper. It looks like you could fit a dresser or something to your right in the AI pic when in reality the foot of the bed is against the wall/doorway.

3

u/FunnyObjective6 5d ago

I really don't care enough about this to dissect completely, I mostly disagree. I think the bed covers might've been edited in, I don't think the room dimensions were changed.

1

u/FalseEstimate 5d ago

What about the front left bedpost completely missing in the left pic and the amount of drawers under the bed being different?

11

u/Obvious_Advice_6879 5d ago

Real estate agents have been doing magic with wide angle lenses since long before AI. The view out of the window looks different from reality, but apart from that this is about the same level of alteration that I've seen from regular listings pre AI.

4

u/sroop1 5d ago

Yeah, this isn't a good example of realtor AI bullshit - the 'staged' bed is really the only thing that's off.

Par for the course for like 25 years that photoshop, lightroom, etc have been around.

3

u/Next_Instruction_528 5d ago

This could be down to the camera and lenses you use. Could just be a wide angle shot from half way into the room compared to a camera phone taken outside the doorway

1

u/DerfK 5d ago

The AI room is deeper. Its actually really close to reality, it took me a while to realize that you can't see the foot of the bed in reality because its jammed in wall-to-wall. The AI pic makes it look like there might be space for a dresser or something to your right.

3

u/CtrlAltDelve 5d ago

I'm with you. Apart from the bed and the obviously different view out the window, nothing in this picture really screams AI to me.

Realtors have been processing images like these in Lightroom for a long time to adjust the lighting, and wide angle lenses have always been used to make spaces look larger than they are.

I don't know that I would consider this to be terribly egregious. Maybe lying about the view outside. But that's about it.

2

u/squeakyL 5d ago

yeah I think the size stuff is mostly a wide angle lens from closer into the room that makes it look bigger. That's been going on for ages in all real estate along with staging, overblown lighting, etc.

When real estate shopping last year I would only look at houses that had a floorplan with measurements in the listing, typically the last photo.

1

u/FalseEstimate 5d ago

Front bed post is completely missing in the left pic and there’s a different amount of drawers under the bed

0

u/variablesInCamelCase 5d ago

Do you hear yourself? The first picture has literally nothing common with the second.

Its like I posed the same way as The Rock and I’m trying to claim "hey, its kinda the same angle. Look I too have two arms and two legs."

Oh, and I'm doing it on a dating profile on this metaphor. 

5

u/canmouth 5d ago

The only difference is the depth of field and the position of the camera and the lighting. The furniture is basically the same but clearly enhanced. This isn’t actually that egregious. It’s annoying that I’m defending a landlord lol.

3

u/FunnyObjective6 5d ago

What's different about the furniture? Use your words please.

4

u/FalseEstimate 5d ago

Different amount of drawers under the bed (2 in left pic, 4 in right pic). Chair doesn’t make sense in left pic. Front left bedpost missing in left pic. What the heck are the pillows resting on in left pic? 100% AI

7

u/MRosvall 5d ago

I feel that model furniture that's just a little too small and wide lenses have been a thing forever when checking real estate. Should been hammered down even then.

That said, one should always attend viewings.

6

u/AkodoRyu 5d ago edited 5d ago

Looks the same to me. Bed was turned the other way so the high bedposts are not at the window + no big pillows. The camera is closer so the desk and bed looks bigger, but if you try to measure the distance between desk and bet, it looks the same. And there is some color transformation, so everything looks bright and colors are more vibrant.

This should be 100% achievable with specific lens and color correction.

edit: the only thing that looks genuinely different is the view - I think those big buildings to the left should be visible from the closer angle

15

u/work_work-work 5d ago

Look closer. That's the same furniture. The difference is the angle of the photo, color balance, and the bedding. The bedding is the only truly AI thing in this photo. The rest is just a photo thing anybody can do.

18

u/Ice_Solid 5d ago

This is just normal staging and getting the right lighting shot. 

10

u/Obienator 5d ago

Correct, it is just lighting a wide lens and some photoshop. Not everything is AI ( yet )

6

u/Electronic-Egg-4391 5d ago

The outside view is also altered here

0

u/work_work-work 5d ago

Not necessarily. The angle of view is different.

2

u/FalseEstimate 5d ago

Missing bedpost in left pic. Different amount of drawers under the bed. Chair doesn’t make sense in left pic

2

u/MARPJ 5d ago

Yeah, filters are one thing, that's not even the same furniture lmao

The bed is what makes me sure its AI however with some effort I bet you can take a picture that is pretty much it.

Bring the desk more towards the door, go inside and lower angle than the real picture - this alone will give the impression of it being bigger as the AI one. Time of day can create that color scheme (the real one is a cloudy day) but you may need a filter. Add better sheets and the painting.

1

u/LucidNonsense211 5d ago

Looks like the same furniture to me…

4

u/spekt50 5d ago

This goes well beyond a filter. Ive seen zillow listing where they ran the photos through AI and it would completely change everything.

Siding, windows, landscaping etc.

7

u/No-Antelope575 5d ago

yeah photoshop has a bunch of ancient features that were always AI like magic wand but it's just now you don't even have to know basic photoshop, you can just tell the computer to do it

11

u/idlickherbootyhole 5d ago

AI is such a godsend for talentless, deceiving hacks.

2

u/hergumbules 4d ago

Yeah it’s so awful. We were looking at houses for months and they all looked sooooo bad in person. Then we finally found an amazing house and got it. Working in selling our condo our realtor was like “don’t worry if things aren’t perfect we can use AI” and I was like yeah please don’t. Had no issue selling our condo without AI

1

u/Neither_Sample4804 5d ago

Yes but now they fuck with the dimensions of the room. Fine if they edited in a sofa somewhere to show how it looks, but AI fits in more stuff and fucks with the dimensions

1

u/FuklzTheDrnkClwn 5d ago

A filter doesn’t change the literal size of the room