🦾 AI Is in the Room. Now What?

Two weeks ago, I wrote about clients using AI in their real estate searches and transactions - questioning the agent about the legalese in the brokerage agreement, deciding whether someone is in Default on the Purchase & Sale Agreement, and much, much more.

I also made a post about the linguistic clues that what we are reading and hearing everywhere may be AI, and the phrases I now have to avoid in my own writing because they present as AI slop.

More than one person replied that it all needs to stop and we need to go back to the way things were.

I understand that instinct, but the genie is out of the bottle. The horse is out of the barn. AI is not coming — it is already here and running inside tools we all use daily. The conversations happening at a national level are not about whether AI should exist. They are about regulation: what guardrails should be required, who bears liability when something goes wrong, and whether it should be disclosed that something was created with AI.

So here we are. That earlier piece was about being prepared for your clients. This one is about you — specifically, how agents are actually using AI tools, what works and what amounts to handing agent duties and broker compliance to an unlicensed digital assistant.

My recommendation is this: be aware of AI’s near-constant presence, and use it where and when it genuinely helps in your professional and personal life.

I have been using paid versions of both Claude and ChatGPT for a while now, because the data privacy protections on paid accounts are meaningfully stronger than the free consumer versions. I use them for research, drafting, brainstorming, organizing, reorganizing, copy editing, and image creation. I also close real estate transactions as an attorney, which means I see what comes out on the other end when agents use AI in ways they shouldn’t.

Here is what I have learned, from both sides of that.

You Are Probably Already Using AI — Whether You Know It or Not

Zoom is transcribing. Adobe is summarizing. Canva builds graphics from a description you type into a box. DocuSign is adding AI-assisted features. If you opened any of those tools this week, you used AI.

The tools agents most often mean when they ask to “learn AI” are large language models - ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and similar platforms. These are the text-generation tools that can write a listing description, draft a client email, summarize an HOA document, or, yes, build a fully functional DND-style role-playing game game for a CE class. (I did that one from my phone at a happy hour. It is genuinely beautiful and I am still working on it.)

The reason these tools matter for your business is the same reason they require your careful attention: they produce output that looks and sounds authoritative whether it is correct or not.

What AI Does Well — and How to Use It That Way

Used correctly, AI is exceptionally good at a specific set of tasks.

First drafts. MLS listing descriptions, buyer and seller meeting notes, CMA narratives, social media captions, email sequences, neighborhood profiles — AI produces solid starting points in seconds. The key phrase is starting point. You do have to read every word before anything goes to a client or gets published.

Brainstorming at scale. This is the most underused strategy I have found: Don’t ask AI for one answer. Ask for 10. Ask for 25. Ask it for 25 more. Take one of the outputs and tell it to give 25 more like that. When I need objection-handling responses, I ask for seven different approaches. When I want a post idea, I ask for ten versions. AI does not get tired or annoyed when you keep asking for more options. Use that. Pull the best pieces from the batch and make them yours.

Document research — with verification. I have uploaded HOA bylaws and insurance policies to ask questions about specific coverage issues. The workflow that works: give AI the documents, ask your question, have it point you to the relevant sections, then open the actual PDF and read those sections yourself. AI as a research assistant that narrows your reading is genuinely valuable. AI as the final word on what a document says is getting professionals in trouble.

Adapting your message for different audiences. AI is excellent at taking the same information and retranslating it for different personality types and communication styles. I used this in my wire fraud education materials. I gave AI the facts about how wire fraud works and asked it to explain them five different ways: for the skeptic, for the person who wants the bottom line, for the person who needs to feel cared for, and so on. I asked it to write each version for each personality type when the audience is a seller, a buyer, and someone who is selling and buying at the same time. It handles the translation. We handle the accuracy check.

Copy editing without rewriting. Instead of asking AI to rewrite your work, ask it for a specific list of suggestions focused on grammar, punctuation, and anything glaring. Tell it explicitly that you do not want style choices. That keeps your voice intact and lets AI do what it actually does well, which is catch the things that are hard for you to notice. Some people are purposefully including grammatical errors in their materials to prove a human created it, but I think we have done enough damage to professional language and prefer to use the correct its/it's or there/their/they're.

Where AI Goes Wrong While Sounding So Certain

A good attorney, an experienced agent, and a knowledgeable broker will tell you when they’re not sure. AI does not do that. It states incorrect information with exactly the same confidence it uses for correct information. You cannot hear the difference unless you already know the answer, or you ask it to show you its sources.

Contract questions and Georgia-specific legal matters cannot be accurately explained by AI with even a 50/50 chance of getting it right.

I have corrected my AI on Georgia-specific details: agent duties, disclosure requirements, financing mechanics, buyer and seller rights and responsibilities under our standard forms. Even then, it has given me the same incorrect information back within the same conversation. It does not hold corrections the way a human would. It also does not hold a Georgia real estate license or a Georgia law license, which means every word it produces about your transaction is your responsibility.

Here is a real example from my practice. An agent used AI to write an appraisal gap special stipulation for a VA loan. The language said what appraisal gap language usually says: if the property appraises below purchase price, the buyer agrees to pay a set amount above appraised value. The problem is that VA loans include an amendatory clause that says the buyer cannot be obligated to purchase the property for more than what it is worth. AI knew just enough to add a sentence at the end saying “nothing in this clause shall be deemed to conflict with the amendatory clause.” That sentence is meaningless. Everything before it conflicted. That is what I call garbage in a very convincing wrapper, and it is exactly what we are seeing from AI on the legal side of real estate practice.

Agents are now sending me stips AI wrote and asking me to proof them.

• A recent one was a stip for a buyer on an expensive property that currently has a tenant in it. The concerns are obvious. The buyer wants to make sure the tenant gets out and the property is in good condition after they do. AI handled portions of the contingency fairly well but gave its own description of the condition of the property and the buyer's remedies that were less protective of the buyer than what is already written in the standard contract.

• Another stip defined terms that were already defined in the agreement, but did so slightly differently. The GAR agreement defines a Business Day and a Banking Day and the time zone. It said only business days count but that any deadline falling on a non-business day extends to the next day. If those days never count, no deadline will fall on that day. Sounded professional and made no logical sense, which is AI's superpower.

Even if you start with AI as a base, contact your broker or use the GAR legal hotline or contact a real estate attorney. Do not put that question into AI and copy and paste the output into your agreement without review.

Fair housing review is your job, not AI’s. AI is trained on historical data, and historical data contains historical bias. It also gets things just plain wrong. It included a word on the list of problematic words that has been on lists of OK words for 31 years dating back to specific 1995 HUD advertising guidance.

AI invents facts. If you upload two documents and ask a question, AI may draw from both. It may also add information that is in neither document. I have seen this happen with insurance policy questions, where AI cited information from HOA meeting minutes as if that information appeared in the insurance policy itself. When I asked it to show me exactly where in the insurance policy it found that information, it acknowledged the policy did not say that. The correct prompt was not “does the document say this?” It was “show me where in the document it says this.” One version lets AI guess. The other one makes it show its work.

3 PRACTICAL STRATEGIES

STRATEGY 1: USE THE STAR PROMPT FORMULA

The single biggest difference between agents who find AI useful and agents who give up on it is how they write their prompts. Vague prompts produce vague output. The STAR formula gives you a repeatable structure that works across every type of content:

S — Situation. Set the scene. Tell AI who you are, who it is in this conversation, and what context matters. “You are a professional real estate copywriter. I am a buyer’s agent in Alpharetta, Georgia, representing a move-up family.”

T — Task. Tell AI exactly what to produce. Be specific about format, length, and type. “Write a 3-paragraph MLS listing description.”

A — Audience. Define who will read this. “For a move-up family prioritizing proximity to mass transit and outdoor space.”

R — Requirements. Add your guardrails. Word count, tone, what to include, what to leave out, compliance limits. “Under 250 words. No price. No fair housing red flags. Do not talk about what it is NOT; talk about what it IS.”

That last piece — Requirements — is where your professional knowledge becomes the guardrail for what AI produces. You are telling it the rules.

STRATEGY 2: APPLY THE REVIEW CHECKLIST TO EVERY PIECE OF AI OUTPUT

Before any AI-generated content goes to a client, gets posted publicly, or enters a transaction file, run it through REVIEW:

R — Read every word. Do not skim. The errors are in the details.

E — Eliminate fair housing red flags and incorrect terminology. Check for neighborhood code words, family references, lifestyle assumptions, and any language that could be read as steering. Did it call our "Agreement" a contract? Did it call our "Buyer" a purchaser?

V — Verify all facts against your source documents. If AI cited something from an HOA document or insurance policy or law or regulation, find the actual language in the actual document and ask for the actual link to the actual source to double-check.

I — Insert your personal voice and client-specific details. AI gives you a first draft. Your knowledge of this client, this transaction, and this market is what makes it useful. You also want it to sound like you. This is where you add the words and phrases that you use often when speaking so those used to hearing you feel like this message is consistent with you.

E — Ensure the brokerage name is present where advertising rules require them.

W — Watch for confidentiality leaks. Check that you have not included client names, financial details, or private transaction information in what you are about to publish or send. If you never give AI the non-public information, it cannot accidentally give it back to you.

STRATEGY 3: KNOW WHAT NEVER GOES INTO A PUBLIC AI TOOL

Two non-negotiable rules for Georgia agents:

First, do not upload GAR contract forms into public AI tools. The GAR License Agreement has not been amended to address AI use, but uploading licensed contract forms into a public platform may implicate the confidentiality and copyright provisions of that agreement. The terms of the license in the L1 form have said for years that the forms cannot be provided to a third party. This includes standard purchase and sale forms, brokerage engagement agreements, and disclosure forms. The workaround: describe the situation in plain language without uploading the form. Then check the output against our forms. This protects the copyright and creates better understanding that comes from actually reading the words in the forms.

Second, anonymize client information before it goes anywhere near an AI tool. No client names paired with financial information. No Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or bank account details. No confidential transaction terms. Think of every scenario you describe to AI as an avatar rather than a specific person. “A buyer with a $500K budget in ZIP 30022” works. Your client’s name and financial details do not belong there.

One more note on data privacy: Check the settings on any tool you use and verify what the data-sharing defaults actually are. But also think about all of the data leaks involving information that was supposed to be safe: IRS, Equifax, etc. The safest rule is simpler: if you never put it in, it can never come out.

AI IN YOUR PERSONAL LIFE — WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

The conversation about AI does not stop at your office door. My recommendation was to use it where and when it helps in both your professional and personal life, so here is what that actually looks like outside of business.

Planning trips and travel. I describe where I am going, what I care about, and how long I have. AI builds an itinerary and a list of specific recommendations — not a generic tourist list, but one shaped by the details I gave it. I still verify hours, prices, and reservations before I go.

Drafting hard personal messages. The emails where I know exactly what I want to say but keep restarting because I can’t find the opening. AI gets me past the blank page. I make the final version mine.

Thinking through decisions. I do not ask AI what to do. I ask it to help me write out both sides of a situation and then push back on my reasoning. It has a reliable way of surfacing the thing I was avoiding.

Summarizing long things before committing. Articles, research reports, documents I need context on before I have time to read them in full. AI gives me the overview; I decide whether the rest is worth my time.

Gift ideas. I describe the person — their interests, their habits, the occasion, what they already have — and ask for options I wouldn’t have thought of. AI is genuinely good at this one.

Event planning. Menus, timelines, invitation wording, staff instructions. AI handles the logistics well and can create professional forms and email to go out to everyone else involved.

Wellness and personal development tracking. I took everything tracked on my smartwatch (that I was keeping notes on in Evernote) and all of the tasks in my task app and consolidated it into a single dashboard and task bank. It has all of the functionality I want and nothing that I do not need.

AI does not have to be dramatic, complicated, or limited to business strategy. Sometimes the best use is the most ordinary one: getting organized, getting unstuck, thinking more clearly, or saving yourself from recreating the wheel in every corner of your life. The key is learning where it can take the first pass, sort the mess, offer options, or build the structure so you can spend your time and energy on the parts that actually require you.

REALSMART REMINDER

AI is a first draft tool, final draft copy editor, and a brainstorming partner. Your real estate license, your professional judgment, and your knowledge of your state’s law are what make it safe and useful for your clients. Every word that goes out with your name on it is yours - and so is the responsibility that comes with it.

RESOURCE LINK

DOWNLOAD: ​Real Estate AI Playbook.pdf​

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If this topic matters to your business, you’ll want to listen to a closing attorney and REALTOR® break it down.

Cheryl Conner King

Founder & Instructor

REALsmart Real Estate School

Attorney | REALTOR® | CE Instructor

📍 Based in Georgia | Teaching Statewide