AI Editing: Is It Legal to Use?

In this episode of the PropMedia podcast, hosts Moses and Matty, co-founders of PropMedia.com and Pixlmob, discuss AI editing and the question: "Is it legal to use AI editing?" The conversation explores the distinction between generative AI and other machine learning technologies and the ethical implications of using AI editing in property media.

The hosts emphasize that AI editing is a tool, and its legality depends on how it is used. They discuss scenarios where using AI editing can lead to fraud or misinformation, such as removing non-real estate objects like bar stools or boxes, which can inadvertently alter important details about the property. The responsibility for misrepresentation ultimately lies with the person listing the home, not the photographer.

The discussion highlights California's current law, which does not ban editorial changes but requires disclosure of those changes by the advertisers of the property. The hosts argue that external legislation and enforcement are necessary to protect the public and restore trust in imagery, advocating for systems that link images back to the camera and disclose any alterations.

They also explore the broader ethical issues, drawing a parallel between image manipulation and the difference between persuasion and propaganda: transparency in reasoning is key. The episode concludes by stressing that the authenticity of images in real estate media is increasingly important given the speed and convincing nature of AI editing.

For more on disclosures, visit https://propmedia.com/disclosure.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There really needs to be things that link imagery back to the camera it was taken on, that disclose how it was altered in ways that are publicly available. Like until that happens, where there's a stamp that what I took with my iPhone has not been altered, that what I took with my Sony Alpha has not been altered, or more likely has been altered in the following ways. And that's something that I can easily drill into. Until that happens, I don't believe anything on the internet. And nobody does anymore.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

This is Moses, and I'm Maddie, and we are the co-founders of propmedia.com and pixelmob.com. This is the prop media podcast where we talk about everything related to prop media. Today we're going to be talking about AI editing and is it legal to use?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Is it legal to use AI editing?

SPEAKER_00 0:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Probably not.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Probably not.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

I mean, everything AI should be illegal, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Is a this is gonna be a very short podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Yeah. The answer is no, it's not legal. No, I'm kidding. It's I mean, it's legal. I mean, it's not something that's illegal in most places right now to use AI to do things.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Why would it be illegal?

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, I think uh, you know, it's actually a little bit of a confusing question at some level because we gotta define like what we're talking about. What is AI editing? Yeah, but we see there's a lot of stuff that we see today. We're seeing HDR blending being automated, and we use the terms AI even on our platforms. We say AI, HDR, and we're using a lot, those things are using technologies that obviously are machine learning, and it feels very kind of like the same ethos as Chat GPT or something like that. There's this kind of like magical AI, it does something in a black box, but it's not the same thing as when I think a lot of people are talking about generative AI. It's a those are two kind of distinct different ideas.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Well, why don't you define those? Because I mean, the AI editing you're describing can have generative problems and artifacts and things like that. So, what why are you making a distinction between the two of them?

SPEAKER_00 2:09

I think usually when there are artifacts, it's using generative elements. Yeah. So like uh when it's like sky replacements, like that is like a generative, that part is generative, but the HDR blending is not. I do think there's there's still a major difference. It's usually the problems come when you're adding or subtracting something to the image. Um, and that happens even when there's, you know, in the sphere of HDR blending and our normal HDR editing, we see those kind of things, particularly with skies in fireplaces. There's kind of a mix in our HDR tools now offer these features.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

So maybe if we weren't making a clickbait title, then it should be the question of something like how do you not use AI editing illegally? Or what is illegal to use AI editing for? Because it's a tool, right? So if you just use it for a normal thing, it's not going to be a problem. But if you use it for particular things that lead to fraud or misinformation or things like that, then it starts to cause a problem. So, like guns are not illegal, at least in America. Uh, but you can do really illegal things with guns. Same for AI editing.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah, good distinction.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

What are some of the big categories of things that you can totally do with AI editing?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Yeah, I mean, there's uh obviously a wide range of stuff that you've always been able to do with any kind of editing.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

Well, and that's a distinction you've made with me several times because I'll talk about like where humans still stay in the process. And you often remind me, like, even using Adobe or something that we continue with that we think of as being more human uses a lot of AI elements, and modern versions of Adobe use even generative AI elements for certain procedures. You what are some of the use cases that you see as they're probably not problematic at all ever? They're this is just kind of par for the course. This is the new era of AI editing, and this is stuff that it can do easily.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah, I there's I think there's a little bit of a great, I don't think there is a par for the course like it'll change in a month. Yeah, I I think what it comes down to is like, are you misrepresenting the home? And here's the major distinction. At the end of the day, if you're a photographer, you are not listing the home, and what you're doing is not illegal. Like there's you are not advertising the home, you are not listing the home. At the end of the day, that responsibility lies with whoever is listing the home.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Yeah, but I mean, just an important caveat. If if you get your realtor's license taken away, they're not going to shoot with you anymore. So, you know, it is a little bit relevant. So yeah, not that there isn't any like uh potential blowback there, but well, and to your point, like um I see a lot of photographers taking that responsibility on their own, like, and that's just not real. You don't have to take it fully on yourself. But when we were like when we were much more active with North Seventh, this was a conversation that came up several times of like, well, should how much should we police that and what we do?

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Um, and then we had several instances come up where like we would remind realtors of like, hey, you know, you you're not allowed to misrepresent the property like this. We shouldn't delete the power lines and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, that's kind of their decision, was kind of what we came down to, and they're gonna get in trouble for it if they do something like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I have a perfect example, actually. I remember a case where they wanted us to add in landscaping, like adding in bushes in front of the uh front steps, uh, or beside the steps. And we were like, well, that's like a substantive editorial change to what's physically there.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

And in in most states, changing landscape, heart, particularly hardscape, anything like that is continu, it's considered the real state. Anything connected to the dirt.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Right.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Um, and that's it's something that I wish photographers knew more about in some places. Some people are super educated about it. Um, but it's it's this weird dance, right? Because like it's not our, we don't have a license to shoot photography, so we're not regulated in the same way as a realtor. So there's this like we are not babysitters. If somebody's gonna hire us to do something, this is something you just remind me about. It's like if we're gonna put that on the website, because that's what we thought about at the time, was like we're gonna put on there like the MLS rules of what we can and can't do, but then those are different for an Airbnb host, those are different for an architectural project, those are different for all kinds of things that people could hire a property photographer to do. So that's not really fair either.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah, I there isn't a one-size-fits-all. To your point, like not all property media is real estate, and there's different there's definitely laws around uh MLS is what you can put in there. Do the same rules apply for Airbnb? Is it, you know, they're different.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

I mean, they have their own regulations, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Sure, right. And yeah, and then legality is a kind of a big thing. I just uh I think part of the reason why I wanted to talk about this specifically is because this is a conversation that's happening about is it illegal? What is illegal? Uh right now there is a single law uh in the United States.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

California that we we talked about a couple weeks ago, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

So that law is specific to California, and it's not that it's illegal to make these editorial changes, it's illegal to not disclose when you make those changes. And even once again, that's only the people who are advertising the property, not the photographer, not the person creating the photos.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Yeah, so I don't need to live in fear that if I go into Gemini and change something, somebody's gonna knock on my door in the middle of the night and arrest me. Like there's not any, there's not any, there doesn't need to be any fear for a media producer in that sense. But at the same time, I think it is very important for us to start considering and having a uh intelligent conversation as an industry about how we can support our real estate partners effectively. So let's talk about a like a particular um a particular example of why or why it would not be illegal to remove a bar stool from a kitchen photo. Because like when I first heard about this and was thinking about this, I was like, okay, so that'll apply to if you change something about the house. There was a butler pantry and you made it twice as large. There was this kind of granite and you changed it into that kind of granite. But then when I started digging into it, I was intrigued by the ramifications of removing non-real estate objects.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah. Clutter boxes, any of that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 8:43

Right. Because at first blush, and particularly the way the MLS used to interpret this kind of stuff, that would not have been that's not a real estate um, that's not important to the sale of the real estate to declutter the counter. It's not important that there are or aren't bar stools because they don't convey with the house. And I think that's kind of there's there's this um I don't know, framework that I think a lot of the conversations I've had with people about this exist in that is if you're not changing the house, you're not changing the landscape, and you're not changing the hardscape, then you're safe. And what we're starting to see is that that's not exactly true. So in the new law, why why does it matter? Why does it matter if we use Adobe to remove some bar stools?

SPEAKER_00 9:29

I think it matters, particularly in the cases where imagine a scenario you've got uh the family is moving out of this house and they've got all their boxes up on the counters, and uh you're like, well, that looks like a mess. And the realtors ask, is there anything we can do to remove those boxes?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Can you delete those boxes?

SPEAKER_00 9:50

Yeah, and honestly, that's a few clicks away, and you know that, but I can charge them$25 or$50 to do that. Charge them$20 a box. Yeah. And it saves the family a bunch of time, and they're gonna, you know, think you're some sort of wizard. And it's um, all right, you're like, I can do that, no problem. Box is gone in a few clicks.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

And there's great motive for that. Like you're marketing the property the best it can be, you're trying to help your client out because they're frazzled and moving. Like, there's no malice in this, of course. But why does it start to become a problem?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Now it starts adding in outlets of on in the backsplash where that box was covering, or it removes outlets that are there, or there's tiles missing in the real world, um, or like it just gets details wrong, it's going to have to guess, and it does like a really great job, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

It does a phenomenal job, but that's part of the problem, right? Is like you look at that photo and like you look at some AI and stuff like that, and it's definitely on Cany Valley, and you can tell, okay, that was generated by Midjourney. But at the same time, when you're talking about just something as simple as removing boxes from a counter and it's taking Uba Tuba granite and just extending it and just making it, it looks perfect. Like you would have to like go into Photoshop and zoom way in to see any kind of artifacting or problem with that. It's gonna look like a perfect photo. But when that happens and you lose an outlet, and somebody makes a buying decision to fly across the country to see your house because they know they need three outlets in their kitchen, and they're like, hey, this one's perfect, and that's even part of their buying decision, starts to be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Yeah. Because it's easy to go from okay, I've got boxes on the counter to I have this big storage shed that got dropped off in the driveway, and we're gonna remove that. And now we're What was behind? Yeah, is it adding in garage doors? Is it adding in rain spouts that weren't there? You know, whatever, you know, like it's uh, you know, gates and fencing that may or may not be there.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Or when you're talking something that big, like a shed, like, are there power lines? Is there a transformer behind that? Like these are extremely relevant questions that even though AI can create a completely beautifully rendered marketing image, it's not fair to a consumer to have their understanding of the property they're considering buying obstructed by a bad marketing image. But I love the fact that California has not banned, yeah, it's not like completely prohibited. Yeah, it's not it's not gone in and say, like, you cannot use Gemini, you cannot use um Adobe to do this type of manipulation. They're smarter than that. And I think with great reason, like, can you imagine trying to enforce that? So the instead they're targeting just okay, we know that this stuff is gonna happen. We know that everybody with a Gemini prompt can remove a thing. So, how do we create a world where photographers can do their thing? We're not Luddites and preventing photography from using legitimate technology, but we do want to protect the public. And so they've zeroed in on this really narrow framing of basically you can do whatever the heck you want with AI editing. However, if you're going to market a property, then changes, editorial changes to the images have to be disclosed. It has to be obvious to the consumer, is the heart of the law. Obvious to the consumer that boxes were removed from this photo so that the consumer can make an educated choice of okay, there are boxes in this one, there are not boxes in this one. In the one that has the boxes, I can't actually see if there's an outlet there. But in the one where it's removed, it put in an outlet. I can't trust that. Yes, really. Even though my eyes show me that it's really clear how we got to this point. And I wonder if there'll be more regulation around that, because I think maybe some would be good, but it's a great start, I think, in terms of threading the needle of not getting in the way of technology and protecting people.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

What do you think is the reason why this needed to be a law? Because there's been MLS, you know, uh, rules in many MLSs with these prohibitions for or you know, basically very similar considerations for years.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Why now and why a law? So there's decades. So in the realtor code of ethics, not every real estate agent is a realtor, but most of them are. In there is specific prohibitions about misrepresenting a property. So that would be like what we're talking about earlier, and like changing something about the real estate that's relevant to purchasing. That's a code of ethics problem. However, the MLSs then take that and they translate it into this MLS has you can do sky replacements. Like I heard somebody had a problem with like uh, I think it was a Montana client that I had at one point, and they got it, they didn't get slapped, but a friend of theirs got slapped because they had replaced skies with skies that you would never see. So, like putting like big sky Montana in and they put little skies in, yeah. They put little skies in Montana, like you know, you you you don't really think about it as as relevant, but part of why you move to Montana is big sky, right? So even little things like that that we don't think about can be pretty relevant, but it's super fractured. There's hundreds of MLSs across the United States, and like in our MLS, they care a little, like they care if you massively alter the property, but the only enforcement is if another realtor complains about it. So, how effective do you think that is? I mean, it's probably more effective than most communities because realtors, you know, like to poke at each other. Um, but it's not, it's not awesome. And then what they would typically do is they would just put in the MLS underneath it and just say this is a virtually staged image, or this grass was artificially greened or something like that. And that's all they would have to do. And then that doesn't necessarily translate out to Zillow. So they put in member remarks or a little thing. In the actual MLS, in the MLS in an image, and it says it's a virtually staged image, but the IDX feed that feeds Zillow and Redfin and Realtor.com and all that stuff isn't necessarily intelligent to take commentary or metadata about the image and pull it to their site. So it just pulls the image a lot of times, right? Um, and it is it does different things. Sometimes it's very confusing sometimes what it will and will not pull. And it's just it's difficult to even know because all the MLS's data feeds are different. Like they're not even standardized between the MLSs. So it's just it's kind of the wild west in terms of is it ethical to do? Is it something that you just have to disclose in time inside the professional portal? Is it important to you that it gets syndicated out all the way to the public? Well, that's what the California legislature is saying is important.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Is like these have existed for a long time, but now we're up in the ante to no, that has to somehow survive to where when the public sees it, it's super clear. And that I think is a really good development.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

I think we're seeing something, a new kind of urgency, though.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

I think the reason why it's getting escalated to yeah, why now?

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah, and why so fast? This law came about uh very quickly, and I think it's because uh AI editing is so convincing and it's so fast and so prevalent uh that there has to be like some reaction. And I think we're gonna see California is kind of the first domino in a run. We're gonna see where we're gonna see more and more legislative action around prohibiting AI editing, just willy-nilly. You can just do whatever you want and put it in there. Um, this is becoming a big topic. We're seeing Wired and uh these major publications starting to talk about AI slop in um just showing up in Zillow in the MLSs. People are showing up to houses that don't exist, like little people are taking vacant lots and doing a representation of this is what a house would look like if it existed, and putting that up on the MLS, and people show up and it's not there, rooms aren't there, um, or you know, so it and the thing is it you can do it with just a few clicks, and you know, whatever your imagination kind of can conjure can now be imagined, and you just publish it to and put it up for sale. And that's a that's kind of the scary part, I think. Um, that the general public is actually actually reacting to.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

It it gets really scary really fast because like there are common fraud schemes in real estate where people will take the imagery off of Zillow, put it onto Craigslist as a rental, get deposits. Like, I think we talked about this on one other show at one point. Like imagine that powered by AI. You don't even need like you don't need the Zillow listing. You or you can take it and and totally change it with a couple of clicks. Take the Zillow listing and then publish a AI edited credibility of this is the Zillow listing, and it's changed to a rental in like two clicks, right? So, like the the normal things that we have used as as proof points in the past, like you talked about a couple weeks ago, like the the DoorDash fraud of like making the hamburgers rare and stuff and submitting for a refund. That kind of stuff starts to spiral really fast where you really can't trust images to be real, like we like we have. Like as we've we've grown up for the last 20 years, taking like that we even have a saying, right? Um, picks are it didn't happen.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 19:48

Yeah, that's totally fake now, right? Yeah, picks means it probably didn't happen. Yeah, like if you weren't there, you don't know.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

And even in video, it's you know it's not like yeah, what's the what's real when you're looking on social media is going to be uh and obviously this is becoming so prevalent, and the fact that it's rippling into real estate is kind of crazy that people at some level could be that uh bold. They're like, oh, we're just gonna put fake photos of completely fake houses or completely fake renovations.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Um that already happens pre-AI, so AI will just fuel it.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

It's fueling it, right? I'm assuming you've seen like the Will Smith videos. Like, this is yeah, yeah, this is like the benchmark of Will Smith's hands. A AI video, and it's uh how convincing it is. So this kind of video comes out in 2023 of Will Smith eating spaghetti, and it's this janky, kind of like uh tubistic. It's worth a Google, like this like uh morphism, sloppy, like weird.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

He's got like 19 fingers in one of some of the frames.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

And then you see like the progression to 2024, 2025, it becomes more and more convincing. Um, and then uh at I think at some point in 2024, 25, Will Smith actually makes a video of him eating spaghetti. I haven't seen that one, and and now here in 2026, we've got new uh as we're recording this Seed Dance 2.0 is come out.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

That's what I walked into this morning, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:20

And there's uh you know, there's a bunch of people making Will Smith eating uh spaghetti videos using these new models. And frankly, if you didn't know, you're like, is that real? Like if you didn't know that was the benchmark test, that like oh, you just assume it's fake because it's the benchmark test. Yeah, but like if you just saw that out of completely out of context, you may you probably wouldn't know that that wasn't just a real video.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah, like uh the there's Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise on a roof, is one that's circulating right now. Like, if you look at it, you can it's got some CGI feel to it. Yeah, but when you first look at it, it looks like it came out of a movie, it's crazy. But I think that's that's kind of what we're getting at, right? Like I think there is a there is a fundamental challenge that this legislation is starting to address, and that I think intelligent business owners are going to want to start addressing. I think it's actually going to become a value proposition really soon. Is how do you help your clients have trust with their audience? Because as media producers of any kind, that's fundamentally what we're usually doing, right? You're helping somebody else present something else to someone else. So there is this question now of how do you make that real? How do you have proof points of it being real? And you're seeing this on social media already, where like I saw some my son was watching something, and it was like some some woman doing gymnastics, and then I forgot what she did. She had like she had a lot of moving things in the background and things like that that would have been hard for like AI to replicate continuously. And that was like the heading was so you know this isn't AI. There was like this thing over here moving, or like you've talked to me about like my lights that cycle in the background and things like that, where it might be difficult to edit if it wasn't a continuous shot. So I'm curious like how the industry, both within real estate and otherwise, starts to create proof points of what's real. Yeah, but just like you're talking about with Will Smith, that might work this year that you have a fan running and you have the breeze behind you. And like even looking at Seed Dance yesterday, like I take it back, it's not gonna be a year, it'll be a month before none of that's relevant because you'll just put it in and say, like, hey, I need a fan running here as a proof point for AI as your prompt, and it'll spit it out. So, like anything we do like that is going to be obsolete as soon as AI can replicate it, which is happening faster and faster and faster. So that's what I love about what's currently happening is I think there actually has to be external legislation and enforcement. Because we've seen for years where like Facebook and Meta and stuff like that is like, is this AI? Voluntarily fess up that it's AI and put a little badge on it, or LinkedIn has its little badge and things like that. That's great, but it's not enough to restore public trust. There really needs to be things that link imagery back to the camera it was taken on, that disclose how it was altered in ways that are publicly available. Like until that happens, where there's a stamp that what I took with my iPhone has not been altered, that what I took with my Sony Alpha has not been altered, or more likely has been altered in the following ways. And that's something that I can easily drill into until that happens. I don't believe anything on the internet, and and nobody does anymore.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

I wonder how much of a crisis this is. I think a lot of people are feeling it because the possibility of fraudulent activity is uh so high. You could do it, but like, does that mean that we are in some sort of crisis mode? I don't know. Um could it be? And like I I think it's very early. I don't think we're seeing like a huge swell of a bunch of fake stuff. And we've always had movie magic, like that's I say always, but like as long as real estate media's been around, there's always been the possibility that you could bring lights, you can use different lenses to you know kind of narrow the field of view and show us a very specific view. Like as a photographer, our job is to create a point of view and absolutely to tell a story, and you're doing that editorially by choosing what you are gonna show. We're gonna show that this room leads to a hallway, or that this room's connected to the kitchen, um, and you are very conveniently aiming out that closet, or not you put the toilet seat down, you know, like we do all these things to kind of tell a story. We take the trash cans out, or you know, let's push those flip-flops under the bed, you know, like we do all these things to kind of uh create a sense in a story of showing the house in its best light um and what its possibilities are. And then there's always, as long as I've been in there, there's been digital ways for virtual staging. And before that, there was just regular old staging, you know, like uh these aren't new things. We tried to show the house in the best light possible. Um just now, anyone can do it nearly instantly, uh, for basically for free. And that's the scary part.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

That's the really scary part. And you were saying that you you don't know that there's a huge swell of this, but some of the things that I've been reading, like I I think I think there truly is starting to be a swell of it because sure, since the 90s, we've been able to computer generate unbelievable fake things, but it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per five seconds, right? Now you can do it in five seconds for five cents. So there's like a we we knew that movie magic was constrained into multi-million dollar budgets when it was uh at a level that could be like fraudulent and truly believable. But but now like you can make something believable in the click of a button and a sentence that you type into a computer, and so suddenly you have hundreds of millions, billions of people around the world who are now capable at no cost of having to have a moral quandary of well, I don't like my hamburger. I'm either gonna deal with it or I could get a refund. Yeah, just take make a fake photo of and and suddenly like what was a functional hurdle becomes merely a conscience hurdle, and that's rough, yeah. And so postmodern, largely moralistically neutral or negative environment. So there's there's a lot to be concerned about there, I think.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

So that I think it's definitely true. Uh the photography or photos at large, social media, the things we share and create. And there's a lot of stuff that's you know, uh is shared for fun. Yeah. Um, but maybe let's talk about this. I think it's an interesting conversation is the ethics of uh this kind of editing.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

It does come have you submitted a DoorDash burger raw? Is that do you want me to absolve you? No.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

That was me. I'm just gonna confess now.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

As Maddie's attempt at virality.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yeah, I feel like there's so much gray area. There's some things that are have always been kind of obvious. Virtual staging is like an obvious thing. We're like, this is an empty room in the before picture, after. It's got art on the wall, it's got couches. Um, and the more convincing you can make it, the better, but that's okay. Like that was uh uh an obvious thing. Grass greening is kind of starts getting into like a little bit of a gray area, like because it's not that um the grass couldn't, the lawn couldn't look perfect and manicured, but it definitely doesn't. It's patchy and got weed spots. Well, what about a scenario where you take a normal real estate photo and you change the lighting to look very dramatic, and you've got like this beautiful like uh slash of light, afternoon light coming in and hitting the wall, and it just looks like this magic.

SPEAKER_02 29:30

Making fun of you for that a couple of weeks ago. Robert was like, hey, there better be a giant bay window there to justify the light you just cast across that space.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Right. So this is kind of one this is to me where I think it starts to be like, well, the the gray area is becoming a little bit darker gray. Um, you know, like it the questions there, I do think the disclosure kind of does absolve a lot of stuff. Like if you can see the before it's a lot, it gives you a lot of leeway for those kind of creative improvements. But it I do think it's an interesting argument in this case, is like, well, what about a flash? Aren't in a lot of ways couldn't you couldn't you simulate the yeah, like uh yeah, is flambient deception, right? Well, and even if it's not just flambient editing, you can use a flash to do that dramatic lighting. Yeah, you can use real light, you can use fake lights.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Light was not fake light, but well, like the bay window, you could literally put light here.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

That's what you do in movies. Yeah, you put lights right outside the window to create a certain uh you know effect. So, like, what's the difference now um as far as the ethics? Um, was that always okay? Um, is anyway. I don't know that I have an answer on this, it's just kind of posing that.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Let me brush off my obscure, pretentious undergrad degree in rhetoric and public address, where we studied a bunch of this crap. And I think there's a lot of parallels. Well, yeah, we didn't study AI crap, but we studied what I think is pretty parallel of like what's the difference between propaganda and persuasion?

SPEAKER_00 30:57

A dictator? I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 30:59

A lot of times. Yeah. Um, but the the main difference from like uh a public speaking or a rhetorical stance is the transparency of your reasoning. So, like, most people do not have a problem with me standing up in front of a crowd of people and giving a reasoned argument that lays out the steps of why I believe X about X policy. Nobody has a problem with that, right? That is like the foundation of American democracy. But when you start obscuring it and cutting out arguments and skipping steps and jumping to emotional appeals without foundation and things like that, then most of the time we see that sort of thing as propagandistic, where you are presenting something and you're trying to get an emotional response and action from people without them knowing why, without them understanding why they're doing that. So it's an attempt. If you if you don't like the propaganda example, it's the difference between manipulation and persuasion. And the main difference is do you know you're being persuaded or not? If you don't know you're being persuaded, you're being manipulated. If you know you're being persuaded and you're open to that, you're being persuaded. This is morally good. This is morally bad. And I think that same framework is gonna need to exist and apply in an AI space because it's now stupid easy to make propaganda. And frankly, like you were uh earlier this morning, you were talking about like kids are gonna grow up in a world where they have superpowers. But part of what I'm concerned about is yes, I think that would be really cool for our kids. They can create anything they imagine. But at the same time, if they learn to skip steps, skip reasoning, like the potential detriment and challenge of these kinds of models circumventing that sort of thing in order to get a result moves us in a difficult direction toward manipulation and propaganda, even if the models are well-meaning and people are well-meaning. You put in a prompt of how do I persuade a group of a hundred people to do X? And the expedient thing is for the model to spit out a propaganda campaign campaign to get you what you want. That's not good. And I think those types of reckonings are gonna need to be really real, and I think they'll have to exist outside of the models. There's have to be external support structures of yes, the model can do that, just like yes, your gun can do that, but you're not allowed to do that. Um, and I'm I'm really interested. I'm I'm one part scared, one part excited, and one part like just curious how this is gonna unfold, how humans decide how to regulate this in a way that we can have the technology, but we can have parameters that keep the world safe and a place we want to live in.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

And that's kind of a disappointing answer because I was hoping to build a brand propaganda, which was a good one.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

We can rebrand prop agenda. I like it. Speaking of propaganda, with absolutely no rationale whatsoever, you should 100% use pixel mob for all of your editing needs. Do it.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Um, anyway, no, that was good. It's good. I think this is uh a good, good stopping point for our conversation. But um, anyways, hopefully this is helpful. Um, a helpful conversation for uh people as we're continuing to unpack this. I think it's gonna be an ongoing conversation for many years because I think this is constantly shifting. The abilities uh that we are kind of being granted by technology on like a weekly basis is kind of nuts, um, hard to keep track of.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

It is crazy. We were talking about Kling3 last week, we're talking about C dance this week.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah, yeah. And it'll be another one next week. It feels like uh it's moving that quickly. Um, but yeah, I think uh real estate media is is actually in an interesting spot because the authenticity is so important for I think it's the front lines, really.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

It really is like as we're talking about real estate media where it has really specific ramifications, but the kind of philosophy that we're discussing really should apply to what goes on social media, yeah, and what happens in the news, like it it has far-reaching impact, and real estate often leads the charge in some kinds of policy like this. And I think we've got a good opportunity to do that here.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Cool. All right, thanks. So um, yeah, please subscribe if this was a helpful conversation and uh yeah, give us a like to let us know if this was helpful. Um, we always check the comments, so please, yeah, give us your feedback and ask questions. We'd love to address more of that stuff in further conversations.

SPEAKER_01 35:48

And if you're a budding prop media uh philosopher, definitely leave a comment because I want to know you. Yeah.