NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

https://petapixel.com/2026/07/16/mayor-mamdani-says-landlords-cant-secretly-use-ai-images-to-advertise-properties/

by gnabgib • 4 days ago

591 265 4 days ago

avaer• 4 days ago

There's several other areas that would be good to categorically ban AI usage from:

  - gambling
  - dating
  - hiring
  - advertising

It shouldn't even be controversial that this would be broadly good for society.

I say that as an AI maximalist: I fully trust AI with these things. I do not trust the humans using the AI.

jrflowers3• 4 days ago

You trust AI with dating?

mohamedkoubaa• 4 days ago

Maybe his taste in partners is just that bad

what• 4 days ago

They said to ban AI usage in dating (sites, I assume)?

pjc502• 4 days ago

Perhaps we need OP to explain "I fully trust AI with these things", because it is difficult to define trust in this sense. Yes of course the human motivation was always going to be the real "AI threat", and fraud (and a hugely increased spam volume) was always going to be the main route of AI damage to society.

beambot• 4 days ago

Does basic photoshop count as AI usage...? What about changing color balance, dynamic range, etc?

happytoexplain• 4 days ago

Obviously not, though they may count as misleading image manipulation, and should be similarly regulated. The problem is subjectivity - AI is just a convenient bright line with an easy definition.

LtWorf• 4 days ago

I'm sure soon enough dating apps will get smart and instead of the "you have no matches" they will make some fake AI matches so you have a feeling that something is happening and you have a chance of actually meeting someone.

giancarlostoro3• 4 days ago

No but we used to call that “photoshopping an image” for a reason, especially when done to an extreme.

qingcharles• 4 days ago

Most real estate listing using a type of "HDR" exposure stacking due to the difficulty in taking photos of rooms that exposure the interior correctly and also expose the view from the windows in the same photo. It doesn't show things that aren't there, and personally I see it as acceptable, but I could see some law accidentally making it illegal.

TurdF3rguson4• 4 days ago

- dating

That's called catfishing.

SecretDreams• 3 days ago

For the younger generations, it's just called Tuesday.

muzani• 4 days ago

Advertising would be fine if they checked it. Food advertising has used fake images forever, but it's okay because you know the meatballs don't look like that. You have an idea of what warm fries taste like without the fake heat imagery.

But the dress you get is not the same as the dress in the picture. If the model looked like you, the dress should fit the same, but the AI dresses don't. Same figure, same skin color, same height, and yet the dress looks different.

That's the problem with homes. There's no way a room fits that many things but AI will make it look like it does. There's a distortion where it changes the specification entirely.

It's like showing someone playing Fallout 4 on a MacBook Air. It's a deceptive practice, unlike the cereal boxes showing milk.

fendy3002• 4 days ago

Food advertising has used fake images forever, but it's okay because you know the meatballs don't look like that.

Highly disagree. Color retouch or ambience or effects, sure. But changing shape, size, base color and perhaps some other things is deceit. Japan can do this, other countries should able too

nonethewiser2• 4 days ago

How does this work? Seems more like a law but cities dont have legislatures. Or … ?

phyzome• 4 days ago

Cities in the US can pass laws. They're called local ordinances: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_ordinance#United_States

nonethewiser2• 4 days ago

And the mayor just writes them?

bryanrasmussen2• 4 days ago

well, reading the article Mamdani is cracking down on "deceptive landlord practices" thus it means his administration will apply deceptive landlord practice laws to use of AI images in advertising apartments. At some point if somebody wants to fight the issue they can take it to court.

As a general rule you probably don't need new laws to penalize behavior you think should be penalized, there are more than enough laws where a good faith interpretation would fit.

SoftTalker3• 4 days ago

I'm not sure why you're downvoted. Many cities have a housing department and they can write and update regulations and requirements (within the scope of their legislatively-granted authority) that have the force of law. Things get set up this way so legislative bodies don't have to write and vote on every detail of every rule.

It's possible someone might challenge a rule if they think it oversteps the authority granted.

jambalaya8• 4 days ago

I think it is basically just signaling to the county DA's as to what they ought to consider when seeking out blatant cases of rental fraud; the laws already exist in the deceptive practices code...

I think an actual law does have to be passed to enact the part literally banning all AI imagery on a five boroughs basis, as opposed to just penalizing inaccurate AI genned imagery... which afaik is municipality based. Pretty sure the City Council needs to codify that.

Not sure who would be responsible for enforcing it on pretty much every site in the world that isn't just the real estate broker or building management/etc, though. Would places like rent.com be legally responsible?

chao-• 4 days ago

It works because they are allowed to by the state, by a process specified by the state. The rules and ordinances of a county or municipality are subordinate to the laws of the state that granted them existence in the first place. There's a lot variety in "by a process specified by the state", which results in different structures: commissions, charters, mayoralties with councils, and more.

jfengel• 4 days ago

Cities have city councils that pass laws.

This likely doesn't even require a new law. There is probably an existing law against deceptive advertising in renting. This is just the mayor announcing that he will interpret the existing law to cover AI generated staging images.

cj2• 4 days ago

I'm assuming "AI images" means realtors using AI to stage empty rooms with furniture.

I'm honestly fine with that as long as it's labeled.

Having just done an apartment search a few months ago, AI staged images are surprisingly good quality. It's difficult to detect it as AI when going through a bunch of listings quickly. But yea, I guess it can cause confusion if it sticks a Peloton (or whatever) in a space where it won't actually fit.

pinnola• 4 days ago

I just moved into a new apartment and tried using AI for layout inspiration. Every single attempt expanded the room, shrunk furniture, and even changed where walls were.

Landlords should not be using tools to stage units, it's going to lead to false expectations on the size of apartments.

cj2• 4 days ago

The listings I saw with AI staging usually alternated photos, 1 photo unstaged, the next photo staged.

Which meant you could toggle between the staged and unstaged photo. I didn’t notice any warping or distortion.

dofm3• 4 days ago

Yeah. With CAD models, every single trick I have tried to make photo mock-ups with an AI image-to-image conversion, whether using a line art or canny edge detector or just a shaded source object, has seen the AI ultimately ignore the cues in some generations, no matter what I do, and I would expect it to work a lot better with room photography.

duskwuff2• 4 days ago

There are software tools made specifically for staging (and de-staging!) real estate photos. I don't know if they're using off-the-shelf image models or not, but they have capabilities like restricting changes to specific regions of the image which aren't available in services like ChatGPT.

(De-staging is a particularly neat trick - if a property still has some of the current tenant's belongings in it, an AI model can remove those items to show what the room would look like empty.)

coffeefirst2• 4 days ago

In the 1960s Campbells Soup got in trouble with the FTC for using marbles to raise the ingredients and make the soup look fuller than it was. This was the real standard for deceptive advertising.

I dont care about simulating furniture placement specifically, but most use of AI in advertising that I see today would not be acceptable under that standard.

jockm• 4 days ago

I would love to see that statement backed up with data. If you look at the other comments they are talking about more than just furniture

Gigachad9• 4 days ago

AI images being able to deceive you isn’t justification, if anything it’s the opposite. The staged furniture is there to help you visualise the size of the room. While AI furniture tricks you while not accurately representing the room size and layout.

plants• 4 days ago

This is awesome! StreetEasy is how many New Yorkers find apartments. In the past few years, it has been flooded with AI-staged apartments. The AI stagings warp the room to fit furniture that would 100% certainly not fit there. It’s deceptive, and I’m glad it at least requires disclosure now (although I wish it were fully banned)

evolve2k• 4 days ago

During the press conference he finished with a light joke that was something like “after all it’s meant to be Street Easy not Street Hard”. I assumed that was an app, your post unintentionally closed the loop for me!

Agree AI modified listing make no sense to allow; regulation here is making up for platform failure.

eloisius• 4 days ago

Apartment hunting is an unpleasant chore I haven’t had to do since 2022. It hadn’t even occurred to me that AI slop would be the norm. I really have lived to see man-made horrors beyond my comprehension.

gorgoiler• 4 days ago

I tried searching for Flatbush on streeteasy.com and typing “Fla” into the neighborhood typeahead gave me:

  Chelsea
  [blank]
  Flatiron
  Murray Hill
  Flatbush

Delete the three letters and search for “Bush”:

  Chelsea
  Chelsea
  Chelsea
  Murray Hill

Street Hard indeed.

Eridrus7• 4 days ago

It's super annoying, but this is a total nothing burger because he doesn't actually have any power to do anything here.

This has also been a problem long before AI with "virtually staged" apartments.

kennywinker5• 4 days ago

he doesn't actually have any power to do anything here.

Landlords in nyc are doing business in nyc, which means the city can regulate them, does it not?

thenayr• 4 days ago

Why are you so certain of this? Oh it was a problem before so we should just keep doing nothing even though it will almost certainly become exponentially worse with AI? Love this plan.

filoleg2• 4 days ago

Not going to lie, I wish they also added a square footage as a legal requirement too.

It is entirely baffling to me as to why, but NYC is the only major city in the US I've ever lived in where it is genuinely a problem. In all other cities, I had no issues with that, pretty much every single posting online had square footage.

Meanwhile, on StreetEasy (and other platforms listing NYC rental units), looking for apartments is a major pain, because majority have zero square footage info. And then it turns into a pure guessing game that becomes super annoying, because an apartment I might be interested in is listed only as "1 bedroom", but just looking at the pics it is impossible to gauge whether it is 400sqft or 900sqft. Knowing that info would have made it much easier for renters, and I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.

hbarka• 4 days ago

and I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.

The reason is simple. Omission is deception.

pclmulqdq• 4 days ago

There is square footage on many NYC listings, but it’s wrong. They often have the square footage of the total area occupied by the apartment, including all the interior walls and columns that can take 20% of the area away.

KennyBlanken• 4 days ago

I cannot think of a logical reason to not provide that information.

Because it's to an extreme degree a landlord's market and thus none of them have any incentive to do more than the bare minimum?

Even if it was listed everyone would "stretch" things by including closets and the like. The only way it would work is if the city did the measurements and maintained a database...but then you'd have people bribing the inspectors. they already do it over fire code.

Renting an apartment should require at a minimum registration, inspection (fire code - window/egress, detectors, and ideally an extinguisher and fire blanket), proof of insurance, and some sort of bond per unit that the city holds onto and uses for emergency code compliance repairs.

owl57• 4 days ago

just looking at the pics it is impossible to gauge whether it is 400sqft or 900sqft

Those are not good pics. Probably* for the same reason, to hide size and maybe something else.

*Depends on culture and I don't know about NYC. I've seen another landlord's market where quite a few landlords just post one or two useless photos — and even heard advice to pay attention to such postings as they're definitely not prepared by a professional agent.

culopatin• 4 days ago

Square footage is very much a lie in San Francisco as well

therealpygon• 2 days ago

Wouldn’t it be easier for streeteasy to simply stop allowing 0 sq ft listings/innacurate listings? Maybe allowing people to report listings that are inaccurate and banning repeat offenders? If the market feels that strongly, the pressure on the company would be easy to achieve?

vitorgrs• 4 days ago

I wish there would be a similar thing for food as well. In my country (Brazil), food apps such as iFood are FULL of AI images. Worse is that iFood don't allow reviews to post pictures, so you get very blind asking it.

Now Didi came (99) and Keeta, and they at least allow users to post reviews with pictures.

qurren4• 4 days ago

The motivation is good, the implementation sucks.

requiring disclosure of AI-altered listings

So all the landlords will just disclose it and everyone will continue to be deceived. Just like every other picture on Meta platforms these days says it is AI-edited. That didn't make the feed any better; it's still a feed full of disclosed AI crap.

Why is this mayor so fucking chicken to just BAN AI-altered listings altogether? Have jail time and $1M fines for it. Fines big enough that you would risk losing your property altogether. We need more real leaders.

idiotsecant• 4 days ago

Relax. This post is wildly aggressive for no reason.

sssilver2• 4 days ago

Isn't literally every photograph taken with a modern iPhone technically an "AI-generated / AI-edited image"?

outofpaper• 4 days ago

Yep. Most phones are doing computational photography mining images creating things that never where quite there.

Ar-Curunir• 4 days ago

Yes clearly that is what is meant here.

mingus88• 4 days ago

no, the photos you take with the lenses on your phone are not AI generated. They are generated from the sensors on your phone.

Have you seen some of these listings? We are talking about retaining walls invented where they can’t exist, work displayed that hasn’t occurred, etc. if you show up to a property and it’s materially different than the picture that got you there, that should be illegal.

If you want to make an argument that “everything is AI now” go for it. But I’m happy to see existing false advertising laws evolve as technology evolves

CamperBob2• 4 days ago

It's not as simple a question as you make it sound: https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-galaxy...

culi2• 4 days ago

iPhones use a variety of AI (though not LLM) techniques every time you take a photo. For example they use semantic segmentation where they recognize different aspects of a photo (faces, skies, skin tones, etc) and process them differently

paxys• 4 days ago

If you take a photo of your apartment does your iPhone automatically make it twice the size, add modern renovations, paint the walls and add all new furnishings?

nkrisc• 4 days ago

Does your iPhone edit the image such that it’s substantially deceptive regarding the quality of the apartment to a reasonable person?

estearum4• 4 days ago

Given that this would be the first ever law with any degree of ambiguity ever created, we should create some type of like... room... maybe call it a "court"... where people could "judge" whether a person fell on the allowable or disallowable end of the spectrum

It's a groundbreaking idea but it might work. And who knows, maybe it's an innovation we could apply to other areas of law in case they also ever need to interact with any ambiguity (which hasn't happened yet, of course).

andrekandre• 4 days ago

  > some type of like... room... maybe call it a "court"... where people could "judge" whether a person fell on the allowable or disallowable end

it sounds a bit difficult to pull it off, but i'm all for it!

mequetrefe• 4 days ago

How often would you say you prompt your camera to líe about you in a bid to rent yourself

georgeburdell• 4 days ago

Is that not analogous to putting up a facetuned image on a dating profile?

DangitBobby• 4 days ago

HN title is missing the operative word "secretly". The real title:

Mayor Mamdani Says Landlords Can’t Secretly Use AI Images to Advertise Properties

The article contents align with the real title: you just disclose AI usage when advertising rentals.

wmf3• 4 days ago

That kind of regulation has failed over and over. The obvious outcome is that every listing will have misleading AI "photos".

estearum4• 4 days ago

What?

Is your claim that every photo will be labeled as AI-modified, or that people won't label AI-modified images? If the latter, just penalize the listing agents. Trivial.

The entire issue is that the platforms are already inundated with misleading, unlabeled AI-modified images.

AlienRobot• 4 days ago

Come on, there is no such thing as "trace amounts of AI" in a photo of a building.

jibal• 4 days ago

Please offer proof of that obviously false claim.

polski-g• 4 days ago

And? Anything else and it would be a first amendment violation.

Jcampuzano2• 4 days ago

Define "failed".

If what ends up happening is that every listing has misleading AI photos but they have to disclose it, then also what ends up happening is nobody trusts them anymore. Consumers will know by default to not trust the photos.

In my eyes, thats a win since that's a better outcome than them secretly using AI photos.

Of course in my ideal world it would be outlawed altogether, But even if they were still allowed to use AI photos but were forced to disclose it, that's still a good first step.

tomhow• 4 days ago

Thanks. We’ve changed it to a more neutral title.

dofm3• 4 days ago

AI “virtual” staged images are reasonably common on UK property websites now but they have to be labelled, it seems: probably advertising standards rules.

bjackman2• 4 days ago

Requiring disclosure seems obvious.

Using AI for these pics is also not inherently deceptive though.

I live in an extremely overheated housing market where properties are usually sold/rented long before they actually get completed. I'm fine with landlords using AI in their renders to make claims about how the place will eventually look.

You also see people using AI to put furniture into the image (I assume they are also taking out the furniture that's actually there, belonging to the previous tenant, but doesn't fit their desired aesthetic). Again, nothing _inherently_ deceptive about this.

Main thing is just whether tenants are empowered to back out of the contract if they don't get what they were promised.

Anyone who e.g. uses AI to expand rooms/windows... Jail please.

nubg2• 4 days ago

Why not just put the floor plan with no photos then, or just photos of an empty room with white walls? I can imagine myself how a room _could_ look, what added value does your imagined version add?

bjackman2• 3 days ago

Coz you want to know what flooring, doors, cupboards, bath, sinks, railings, windows, etc they are putting in.

I went to view a flat this week, it was a building site. That's still the most important bit coz you get a feel for the size and shape of the space which is what really matters. But I'm glad to have the AI renders too.

maelito• 4 days ago

Please pass that law in France too.

Aboutplants• 4 days ago

I think this could be something where the middle ground is the best option, this being, just make the rule that any listing with a picture that includes GenAI must also include the original un-AI’d photo right before it. This allows the lister to present the place as it is (important to the renter) and how it could be (important to the lister). I don’t think everything needs to be black and white

clipsy• 4 days ago

That's actually more aggressive than the rule as it exists, which merely requires that AI-modified listing photos be labeled as such.

NonHyloMorph• 4 days ago

Hopefully that will serve as a virtuous example.

throw03172019• 4 days ago

This is a frustrating trend with real estate agents on their MLS pictures. Sure, they have a disclaimer (most of the time) but at a thumbnail size as the lead image, it’s not possible to see it’s AI. Which leads to clicking on a complete BS listing.

SoftTalker3• 4 days ago

At some point I hope we as a society stop trusting anything we see online. It's fake, slop, generated bullshit in most cases and only getting worse.

Gigachad9• 4 days ago

Or we could have our politicians and laws actually work for us. You should straight up be able to collect a bounty if you visit a property inspection and show the online photos are fake.

pjc502• 4 days ago

But this is incredibly bad for commerce when online has already destroyed offline commerce!

We should simply not let people do fraud. Some of the oldest laws define weight and measures for this reason.

morkalork• 4 days ago

Nothing like the bait and switch of a hardwood floor going from pristine in the AI photo to absolutely trash IRL

mupuff1234• 4 days ago

Doesn't this already fall under consumer protection laws? False advertisement & consumer fraud.

PLenz• 4 days ago

It does. This isn't new laws, it's an application of existing law on this practice.

Sabinus• 4 days ago

Consumer protections aren't as fundamental and straightforward in the USA compared to most of the developed world.

nubg2• 4 days ago

Wait, this seems to be just about _disclosing_ the use of AI?

So realtor websites will get a tiny footer saying "image experience may be enhanced with AI"

(note my skilled use of "may" which actually means "are always 100% of the time"... ugh i hate it so much)

nla• 4 days ago

Freezes rents but not taxes. Landlords take inventory offline. Studios at $5500. 1 beds at $7500. Yea, he's a real genius of his own mind.

budududuroiu• 4 days ago

Studios at $5500. 1 beds at $7500.

Zillow quotes: "The average rent for all bedrooms and all property types in New York, NY is $3,710."

Where are your figures sourced from?

hdgvhicv3• 4 days ago

So a landlord would rather not have income from an expensive deprecating asset?

hjkl0• 3 days ago

There are no landlords in NYC anymore, since they all fled when Mamdani was elected.

Waterluvian2• 4 days ago

Isn’t the more thorough solution banning deceptive product advertising?

It feels like this is already a whole thing that should already be solved.

II2II• 4 days ago

Because every time something new comes along, people will push boundaries while arguing it is acceptable. In this case, they may argue that it is no different from physically furnishing an apartment, taking some photos, then removing the furniture. At least in terms of representing the product. Clearly using AI is much easier and cheaper than physically furnishing the apartment for a couple of hours. Some may even genuinely believe this, seeing it as more a tool of convenience than something that doesn't always represent physical reality.

gruez• 4 days ago

That doesn't answer the question. If you used photoshop's content-aware fill (introduced over a decade ago) to hide imperfections in your apartment, that would still be deceptive advertising. Moreover it's almost as easy as asking AI to do it, so the "AI makes everything easier" excuse doesn't work either.

I think the reason is clear. Politicians love to enact bills for already illegal things, but tailored for the current thing. In this case, it's AI, which there's bipartisan opposition. It makes them look responsive to their constituents and requires no political capital, because it's uncontroversial.

Gigachad9• 4 days ago

The whole point of staging furniture is to help visualize and contextualize. Seeing a staged bed, couch, coffee table etc gives you a picture of how large or cramped the room is. AI furniture in contrast isn't limited by physics or reality and does not assist in showing the size of a room. It's only purpose is to deceive the viewer.

AR visualizations where virtual models that are true to real world furniture is much more acceptable.

rapind2• 4 days ago

Probably starts with the most egregious offenders first and then spreads. It'll be interesting to see if other communities follow suite.

bradleybuda• 4 days ago

Yes, but landlords are inherently evil so if you want to keep the slopulism going you gotta hit them first.

mcv2• 4 days ago

Wasn't that already implicitly the case? Aren't there laws against deceptive advertising?

It sounds like an incredibly sensible rule. But is this something a mayor can just declare? Isn't this something aa legislative body has to decide?

nerevarthelame• 4 days ago

It's exactly because there are laws against deceptive advertising that Mamdani can enact theses rules.

NYC's Administrative Code prohibits deceptive trade practices, false advertising, misleading representations made to customers, etc. It gives the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection authority to execute those broad guidelines by enacting specific rules.

So Mamdani and the DCWP are basically saying, "City law gives us the authority to regulate this sort of thing, and because this is clearly in violation, here are the specific rules we're enacting to regulate it."

Cyberdog• 4 days ago

Thanks for that clarification. I was scouring the article and this comment section for some sort of clarification on how this would be enforced, since nowhere does it say that a new law was being passed or something.

mcv2• 4 days ago

This makes sense. So my two questions are the answer to each other. Interesting.

dismalaf• 4 days ago

Are protections really this weak in New York?

Where I live even using Photoshop for real estate advertisements is illegal, nevermind AI.

xuhu• 4 days ago

A real estate photographer described the typical job as taking 15 photos of the same living room while moving a softbox around and then merging the layers in Photoshop. No Photoshop would be like no copy pasting permitted while writing code.

profsummergig• 4 days ago

I'm generally a fan of laissez-faire.

But it's refreshing to see common-sense policies being implemented.

Like another comment posted: platform failures need higher-level (govt. in this case) intervention.

purplecats• 4 days ago

i love this rule, but then again everything i agree with is 'common sense' to me!

DivingForGold• 4 days ago

Mamdani will be sued. It's a 1st amendment issue.

dofm3• 4 days ago

False advertising does not have first amendment protection, surely. And requiring potentially misleading AI images to be labelled surely doesn’t infringe.

benregenspan• 4 days ago

I am not a lawyer, but this seems unlikely. Federal law prohibits "false advertisement" which is understood to include misleading advertisements. Regulators can and do restrict certain types of commercial speech, and this kind of restriction has survived First Amendment challenge.

htlemur_bobby• 4 days ago

Love the guy but let’s try something that doesn’t restrict freedom of the press!

We love restricting our enemies, but there are better ways.

I propose banning rent at all!

saulapremium• 4 days ago

..freedom of the press?

fragmede• 4 days ago

Shit, we're still doing photos? Do a video, make a gaussian splat of it, and do virtual walkthroughs. matterport but for cheap.

kazinator• 4 days ago

Without any consequences, it will just go on as before.

And he only seems to be calling for disclosure, which isn't worth a damn, and can be put into some nearly unreadable print.

JackFr• 4 days ago

What’s the point though? To save prospective renters time?

I’ve lived here for 30+ years, rented for more than 20 and why would anyone ever rent an apartment without seeing it in person?

That being said, IANAL but I imagine the rule is fully legal. The city already mandates a host of things: if the listing markets something as a 3BR, it needs to have 3 rooms bigger than 80 sq feet, each with an exterior window. If they say 3BR and it needs a wall to created the 3rd BR they have to put it up. If it says 2BR convertible 3BR, you might have to pay to have it put up.

tmpz22• 4 days ago

Students, out of state, and other groups may sign a lease sight unseen. Yeah its dumb but it does happen. Yes there is -some- reasonable assumption of risk, but not to the extent to allow blatant deceptive advertising.

rapind2• 4 days ago

It's also a big time waster I would assume, even if you are going to see places, and buries valid listings. Apartment catfishing...

r0m4n0• 4 days ago

Facebook marketplace driving me crazy lately. A lot of people post photos of antiques and other furniture with obvious AI staging. It’s hard to tell what is real and what isn’t. At least there I can just demand the normal photos. I know that isn’t the case with most rentals in NYC because it’s super competitive and already gated in ridiculous ways with brokers and real estate agents.

icase• 4 days ago

you know what they say about stopped clocks

Gigachad9• 4 days ago

Mamdani is pretty much the opposite of a broken clock. Somehow he manages to deliver every single time.

wesselbindt• 4 days ago

They balance the budget?

Art9681• 4 days ago

I am a big supporter of AI and use it heavily. I agree with this. It's not about AI at all. It's about a blanket ban to prevent deceit when selling a product or service. It should be depicted as it is. AI just lowers the barrier for deceit (unfortunately), but it's not the only tool that can be used towards that end. Ban all deceitful advertising.

luckman2122• 4 days ago

Thanks, and you can go ahead and ban all the regular advertising too while you're at it.

infinite_spin• 4 days ago

I think advertising can be done right. Stack Overflow seems to have gotten it right, so much so that I disabled my adblocker for them. What bites me is when the advertisements are for something toward my caveman brain, like being advertised alcohol products while scrolling through instagram. I'd like the ability to say: "yes tell me about the newest raspberry pi products, but don't keep advertising gambling services".

atoav• 4 days ago

I am all for it, where do I sign? The whole ad world has brought nothing but problems to our world.

lopis• 4 days ago

AI should not be allowed in photos of products being sold, period. That's pure false advertising. Disclosing is not enough.

Ozzie_osman• 4 days ago

I would personally love to see an end to the universally existing bait-and-switch of brokers listing unavailable units just to get you on the phone, then when you contact them, saying "Oh sorry that unit just got rented (or sold), but, I have another one that might suit you"

mmmmbbbhb• 4 days ago

Lmao, Mayor lives in dream land. Who's going to spend their days enforcing such a ban

ceejayoz2• 3 days ago

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/services/for-the-public/nyc-agen...

The New York City government employs a workforce of more than 280,000 full-time employees.

You know, I think they'll find a few.

germandiago• 4 days ago

I think this is common sense. You have what you have, not an alternative universe.

jerieljan• 4 days ago

While we're at it, this should cover products and food in general too. I hate it when I see a poster that clearly has AI-generated images of food and the actual food you get is nowhere near what they generated.

Or even if it's similar, it's still clearly staged to look more appealing than what you should be getting.

Everyone knows deceptive advertising is bad, but somehow those who use AI for advertising turned their brains off on this topic because the images looked cooler than what they'd normally produce with a camera.

woodpanel• 4 days ago

You realize that food photography for decades essentially did the same thing? No Burger ever served at McDonalds has ever matched the looks of their advertising, nor is the actual prop-thing that was photographed remotely eatable. There exists an entire form of mastery around this work.

ceejayoz2• 3 days ago

Food photography is regulated; they have to show the actual product being sold.

They just pay a lot more attention to the presentation; pick the nicest bit of lettuce, the ripest tomato, place everything with care.

Stuff you aren't selling can be props, like Elmer's glue for milk in a cereal ad. It won't fly in a milk ad, though.

nekusar• 3 days ago

Why is this even a new law?

Lying and fraudulent misrepresentation is already illegal. And "AI" is just fraudulent misrepresentation.

TRiG_Ireland• 3 days ago

It seems to be a new crackdown within the terms of the existing law.

TuringNYC• 3 days ago

To begin with, they should make it a legal requirement to list Condo vs Coop in listings, not "condo/coop". One is usually easier to get, the other pushes people thru discriminatory hoops that many profiles have no hopes of passing -- but get stuck in the theatre of process and formality (often not knowing the entire process is engineered to exclude them.)

latentframe• 3 days ago

This goes beyond AI its about reducing information asymmetry in one of the largest markets in the economy. The markets work better when buyers and renters can precisely assess what they're paying for. AI just makes mis representation cheaper and more scalable.

adxl• 3 days ago

A college economics professor explained nyc rentals to our class and how people found them ending that they were following ambulances to see where people might have died. Shortage of space was his explanation.

sn9• 3 days ago

I agree with the goals of the policy but I don't understand how it's enforced.

How do you determine if something is enhanced by AI versus just Photoshop or something else? Apart from being physically impossible, I suppose.

NYC may require landlords and realtors to disclose the use of AI in listings

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