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The rise of artificial intelligence has raised big questions about the safety, efficiency and ease of use of the technology — even as it reshapes the real estate industry, panelists speaking at Inman Connect New York said Wednesday.
CoreLogic Director of Product Management Marc-Antoine Juaneda and Fundament All Media Director Boris Geheniau agreed during an ICNY panel that the key to integrating the technology is by experimenting with different tools and ignoring what moderator Craig Rowe, an Inman technology critic, described as “fluff.”
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“I can understand the skepticism with new technology, but I think with AI, you can look at it like it’s a camera on a new flagship smartphone,” Geheniau told an audience of real estate professionals. “If you just use the basics, you can make really good pictures, but if you get into the capabilities of AI, you can make even better pages with it. It’s just a matter of taking a first step in the experiment and building from there.”

Boris Geheniau
Geheniau told an audience of real estate professionals that soon, agents will be able to offer prompts such as, “Give me the 20 people most likely to buy today and 15 people most likely to sell today.” The technology will pull from multiple databases and refine the results based on an agent’s own experience, he said.
Artificial intelligence can also help with everyday tasks such as writing listing descriptions, drafting proposals or automating client emails, which is a major time-saver. However, simply having access to AI tools isn’t enough — agents need to know how to effectively get the best results.
One of the key discussions on Wednesday was understanding the differences in AI technology: Large language models (LLMs) and generative AI.
Geheniau described generative AI as a “big chest of tools,” that includes “audio, text images and videos,” whereas LLMs like GPT, focus specifically on text. He said that LLMs are like a “hyper intelligent pen, and it can write words. The really interesting part is the words you write with a pen really belong to you, and it elaborates on what you you’re able to do.”
Understanding these tools allows agents to use them strategically to improve marketing and client engagement if done the right way.
Rowe noted that many of the real estate pitches that he receives as an Inman reporter have lacked depth, and contained a lot of AI “fluff.” Overall, the pitches are “not compelling,” Rowe said.

Craig Rowe
The lesson here: AI provides results based on what it is given, so agents must-fine tune it to meet their specific needs.
Juaneda’s advice is to focus less on the “fluff” and more on the difficult parts of marketing such as targeting the right audience effectively.
“Instead of blasting the full neighborhood or subdivision or zip code, just target the homeowners that have a high or very high score” he said. “You’re reducing costs, and you’re just making sure that you’re reaching a captive audience.”
Geheniau added, “If you don’t give enough detail, you’ll end up in the basement of search results and that’s where the interest of people will come from.”
Juaneda also shared a study on OneHome.com a few months ago, which showed that listings with photo captions saw 200 percent more engagement, virtual tours increased engagement by 37 percent and detailed descriptions kept buyers’ attention for an average of four additional minutes.

Marc-Antoine Juaneda
“Make sure your listings are high quality, highly detailed,” before using LLMs to market listing,” he said.
While some real estate professionals remain hesitant about learning AI, Juaneda shared a personal story about convincing his baby boomer parents that technology wasn’t just a passing trend. Now, they use Facebook more than him.
Geheniau added that his 80-year-old father, also a former skeptic, now uses ChatGPT daily, calling the technology his new “AI buddy.”
“If he can do it, anyone can,” Geheniau said.