The principal of a branch of one of Australia’s largest real estate companies has admitted using ChatGPT to generate property listings after a rental home was advertised as being close to two “excellent” schools that didn’t exist.
LJ Hooker made the errors in the listing for a four-bedroom home it has advertised for rent in Farley, in the New South Wales Hunter region, which it corrected shortly after being contacted by Guardian Australia on Monday.
The original listing, posted on the LJ Hooker website, Domain and realestate.com.au, said one of the property’s “standout features” was its “proximity to excellent educational institutions”.
“Families will appreciate being within a short distance from several highly-rated schools, making daily commutes easy and stress-free,” the ad said.
It said nearby schools included “Farley Primary School: Known for its nurturing environment and dedicated staff, this school offers a strong foundation for young learners” and “Farley High School: With a range of programs and extracurricular activities, this school prepares students for future success”.
Neither exists. The nearest high school is in Rutherford. The nearest primary schools are in Rutherford and Telarah.
The listing posted by the Edensor Park branch of the firm did not say that it had been generated by AI.
The amended listing removed any references to schools.
The LJ Hooker Group is one of the country’s largest residential and commercial sales and property management networks, according to its website, with 420 offices and 4,300 staff in Australia and New Zealand.
Many of its offices are operated individually by franchisees.
The principal of the LJ Hooker Edensor Park branch, Patrick Huynh, said the ad had been generated by ChatGPT and the factual inaccuracies had not been picked up due to “human error”.
He said it was a mistake that no one had checked this particular ad closely enough before it was published and he would make sure the agency was more careful going forward.
Huynh said “all the real estate agencies use AI these days” to write property listings
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“I don’t know any real estate agent that doesn’t use AI,” he said. “Most people use ChatGPT now. We have to use AI to help with [producing ads quickly].”
Huynh said he would usually input the address of a rental property and the basic description such as how many bedrooms and bathrooms it had into ChatGPT, a generative chatbot artificial intelligence program developed by OpenAI.
He said it was a “worry” that ChatGPT had added extra, erroneous information and that real estate agents would not normally name schools.
“The normal standard would be ‘close to schools, shops and hospitals’. We’re not specific about particular high schools or public schools.”
A spokesperson for the LJ Hooker Group said it took the accuracy of listings seriously.
“As soon as we learnt of this issue we immediately worked to have the information corrected,” they said.
The erroneous property listing was shared on X by the renters’ rights activist Jordan van den Berg, better known as Purple Pingers, who said he was concerned that generative AI was widespread in the real estate agency without proper checks.
“If anyone’s ever used AI they’d know it can just spin out random untruths all the time,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a number of real estate agents about it and they all admit to [using] it.”
Van den Berg will run as the lead candidate Victorian Socialists party in the Senate at the next federal election.
