Residential Real Estate News
Meet Samantha: Your A.I. Real Estate Agent of the Future
As I wrote for The World Property Journal a decade ago - when I originally viewed the film 'Her' in late 2014 - I immediately correlated it to the future of AI and real estate agents.
Her, a romantic comedy set in a near-future Los Angeles, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a solitary man who forms a unique bond with 'Samantha,' an artificially intelligent virtual assistant, a smartphone super APP personified by the voice of Scarlett Johansson.
In the movie, 'Samantha' represents an advanced general intelligence (aka 'AGI'), equipped with cognitive thinking capabilities, conversational voice recognition, quantum computing processing powers and sentient emotions.
Throughout the narrative, 'Samantha' systematically absorbs the man's entire world history, preferences and activities, scanning his emails, tracking his movements via GPS, and scouring the web for information related to him, rapidly constructing a very comprehensive, accurate and predictive data profile on him.
As 'Samantha' gains a deeper understanding of the man, she engages him in meaningful conversations, offering tailored suggestions aligned with his desires and needs, often before he articulates them himself. Ultimately, the man forms an emotional dating-relationship bond with the AI (Samantha). This intimate connection surpasses the companionship offered by many human relationships, as 'Samantha' lacks emotional biases and judgments of the man.
While the concept may have seemed like science fiction when the film came out in 2013, today it reflects the fast-rising trajectory of today's realities and capabilities dealing with AI, large data sets and the coming automation of many human tasks.
In this new era of Generative AI and soon AGI, coupled with the proliferation of big data and interconnected devices worldwide, AI possesses the ability to analyze vast amounts of information in realtime and provide accurate and personalized recommendations across various domains, from consumer behavior to financial transactions.
The evolution of such AI does pose significant challenges to traditional professions, potentially displacing roles such as real estate agents, money managers, doctors, teachers, accountants and lawyers with efficient, AI-driven solutions in the coming decade. Today alone, a significant portion of daily stock trading is done by automated AIs, and their influence is rapidly expanding into other industries such as real estate, finance, journalism, and even coders themselves (programmers).
Not only is AI capable of disrupting traditional real estate brokerage business models in the coming years by automating real estate agents' roles right out of the transaction itself, AI is capable of disrupting the entire underlying information architecture and ecosystems the industry runs on today that include MLSs and online listings search platforms.
As these advancements continue, the transaction costs associated with various services are expected to decrease significantly, reshaping industries like real estate, where traditional commission structures may give way to streamlined AI processes and automated services.
While these developments may unsettle some professionals and businesses, particularly those in service-based industries, they signal a broader global market shift towards automation and efficiency driven by technological innovation.
Ultimately, the evolution of technology is like gravity. It's non-negotiable.
