Generative AI & MLS Listing Photos In Massachusetts

Watch: Mike DelRose Jr., Mike Simoni and Bobby McShane on where AI helps in real estate and where it starts causing problems.

Clients have told us a home looked nothing like its photographs. More than once, and increasingly often.

Not messier than expected. Not smaller than it photographed. Different. Enhanced to the point where the room in the listing and the room they walked into did not match.

Nobody wins in that moment. The showing is wasted, whatever trust the buyer had in the rest of the listing is gone, and the seller loses a prospect they will never know they had.

First, the part that is completely legitimate

We want to be careful here, because virtual staging is not the villain.

Empty rooms photograph badly. They look smaller than they are, the proportions read wrong, and buyers struggle to judge whether their own furniture fits. This is a well documented effect. In the National Association of REALTORS^® 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 83% of buyers’ agents said staging made it easier for a buyer to envision a property as their future home, and 49% of sellers’ agents reported it reduced time on market.

Physical staging solves that and costs thousands. Virtual staging solves a good portion of it for a fraction of the price, which means sellers who could never afford furniture rental now have access to the same advantage. That is a genuinely good development, particularly for estates, vacant properties and anyone selling on a tight budget.

The rule that makes it work is simple. Say that you did it.

What the rules actually say

MLS PIN, the multiple listing service covering most of Massachusetts, sets a clear standard for photographs. An image may be filed only if it contains, displays and is limited to objective information about the physical attributes of the property or about its location.

A furnished picture of an empty room, offered without a label, does not meet that. The room does not look like that.

There is a second layer for anyone who is a REALTOR^®. Article 2 of the Code of Ethics requires avoiding exaggeration, misrepresentation or concealment of pertinent facts about a property. Article 12 requires presenting a true picture in advertising. Those obligations do not pause because a piece of software produced the image.

Adding a sofa is marketing. Adding countertops is something else, because the sofa leaves and the countertops stay.

A detailed before and after picture of a kitchen that was generated by artificial intelligence

How to spot it yourself

Once you know what to look for, generated images give themselves away constantly. Here is what our team notices.

The simplest check of all costs nothing. Look for a floor plan. A floor plan with dimensions cannot be staged, and any listing that has one is telling you something about how the agent operates.

Where AI helps, and where it costs somebody

Photographs are the visible piece, but they are not the only place this shows up. Here is the broader picture for anyone buying or selling right now.

Sellers appear in four of those five rows. This is not only an agent problem.

If you are hiring a listing agent

Ask them directly whether they use these tools, and pay attention to how comfortably the answer comes. Nearly everyone does now. An agent who says no is either behind the market or not being straight with you.

Then get specific. Who reads the listing description before it publishes? Is virtual staging labeled on the photograph itself or buried in the remarks? Does anything that conveys with the house ever get altered in an image? Where do the numbers in the pricing analysis come from?

You are not trying to find someone who avoids technology. You want someone who can tell you precisely where they stop.

If you are the one buying

Treat photographs as an invitation rather than a record. They tell you a property is worth seeing. They do not tell you what is there.

When something looks materially different in person, say so out loud to your agent. It matters for your own decision, and it matters because listing agents generally do want to know when their marketing has misfired. Most of these problems are carelessness rather than intent, and carelessness gets corrected when somebody points at it.

And keep the whole thing in proportion. The overwhelming majority of listings are represented honestly. The point of learning the tells is not suspicion. It is being able to spend your weekends on houses that are actually what they appear to be.