{"id":832899,"date":"2026-11-13T03:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T03:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/832899\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T03:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T03:02:08","slug":"the-rise-of-housefishing-when-does-using-ai-go-from-enhancing-to-misleading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/832899\/","title":{"rendered":"The rise of ‘housefishing’ – when does using AI go from enhancing to misleading?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Estate agents have long used wide-angle lens cameras or Photoshop to make homes seem bigger or more appealing to buyers, but AI is making this process much easier and more accessible. <\/p>\n

It is difficult to quantify how common the practice is, says the Guild of Property Professionals, a trade group of independent estate agents, but it has issued guidance on how to use AI enhancement responsibly. <\/p>\n

According to a recent survey, external<\/a> of 906 UK homebuyers, one in five who had who purchased a home in the past year said they had viewed a property where the listing photos had been digitally enhanced to make the home appear better than it actually was.<\/p>\n

Jack Bushrod reviews quirky property listings he finds on Rightmove for his social media channel, Housing Horrors, and says he has seen a “surge” of AI-enhanced images over the last six months.<\/p>\n

He thinks using AI is fine up to a point – to declutter a busy room, or add furniture to an empty one so a prospective buyer can see its potential. <\/p>\n

But he draws the line at anything that misleads a prospective buyer or wastes their time. <\/p>\n

“I’ve seen one house where they had removed a pillar and added a window. Others might use AI to remove stains on the carpet or cracks in tiles. It’s little details you would only notice in person.” <\/p>\n

He says most of the enhanced images he’s seen weren’t clearly labelled as AI-generated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Estate agents have long used wide-angle lens cameras or Photoshop to make homes seem bigger or more appealing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-832899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}