Episode 44: Artificial Intelligence in Land Real Estate | Guest Hunter Osborn

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Welcome to the REALTORS^® Land Institute Podcast, the Voice of land, the industry's leading land real estate organization.

Justin Osborn: This is Justin Osborn, Accredited Land Consultant with the Wells Group in Durango, Colorado. We've got a really special podcast today for everybody because we've got my own son, Hunter Osborn as our guest. He is a drone operator and a media specialist in Southwest Colorado. Welcome to the podcast, Hunter.

Hunter Osborn: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

JO: Well, I'm happy to have you, man. I've had some really cool guests over the years, but this one definitely is one to remember. So why don't you go into a little back in history here and tell our listeners how you got involved in the real estate industry? 

HO: Well, from my grandma getting a real estate license not long after she had her third son and through you, I've been involved with real estate since before I was born, essentially, but I've been really active for the past five years or so doing drone photography and videography for many different realtors, including yourself.

JO: Yeah, you've got what, close to 150 shoots under your belt, I think? 

HO: Just hit 152.

JO: Awesome. All right, man. Well, yeah, you're building up quite the resume. So talk to us a little bit about how you being involved with the drone work has transferred over into the AI industry. How did you get involved in that? 

HO: Well, I started out as an intern with a small company called Land Hub at the time and got to help renovate their new website. They're doing quite well now and through that internship, just developed some basic drone photography, which led to videography. And that allowed me to attend a Colorado RLI chapter meeting just a few years back where I got to present a video that I made to the large group of people that were there. As for AI, it's always had a large impact on my life and I've been curious about it since long before ChatGPT came out. I've always had an interest in technology and how predictions are made.

HO: But in my freshman year of high school, I had an increasing interest in specifically generative AI. In my sophomore year, as a joke with a friend, I began looking into how to create a machine that could take notes for you and write essays for you. My reasoning being that creating this type of tool would be more fun and less time consuming than having to write down multiple eight page essays that the school assigned us for multiple different projects. I won't go into that right now, but this led me to find the company OpenAI, who had created and released in November of 2022, ChatGPT. I had reached out to the company, managed to get developer access to their models, which let me edit them and use them for myself just about however I wanted. And about a month after getting access, I had a basic tool that does what we know ChatgPT to do now, which is write and create text of whatever you want. Except this one was trained to write how I do.

HO: This led to the high school principal reaching out to Georgetown University and submitting a letter of recommendation that I attend their AI Academy hosted that summer. Since the Academy, I've been assisting local faculty and staff on the proper use of AI in the workplace, along with creating tools for students and guidance counselors that are now used by over a thousand different people.

JO: Well, all right, so let's back up there just for a minute. I wanna make sure our listeners heard kind of what you first started with in that your work and physically being present at one of the Colorado RLI marketing sessions led to a multi-million dollar transaction. And guys, I can tell you that if you're one of these folks that are trying to work from home, sitting behind the desk, staying on the computer, not getting involved in the day-to-day activities, you're gonna struggle in this industry, especially in this organization. The beauty of RLI is the networking and the camaraderie that we build.

JO: And so you've gotta find what's gonna be the closest state meetings in your area, in your region, and I highly recommend you attend those because if they do a marketing day like we do in Colorado, it's gonna lead to a tremendous amount of business. And that's what Hunter's talking about here. It was at a January Colorado RLI meeting when he pitched some of his videos. And within 48 hours, we had multiple brokers in a bidding war on a multi-million dollar ranch in Durango, and that was all because of his work. So little plug there for making sure you attend the meetings that are happening in your area. And let's back up here. We might need to change this from what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas to what happens on the RLI podcast stays on the RLI podcast 'cause I don't know that your mother and I knew you were essentially creating an AI software to do your homework for you. I mean, that's basically what I heard in a nutshell. Did I misinterpret that? 

HO: There was no misinterpretation there. I had worked with the model to train an AI on my voice and how I write and my knowledge base so that the monotonous and tedious work that the school was handing out, just the busy work to fill the gaps between the students who do great in class and those who are struggling a little bit just to even out the schedule, had an AI do that for me. So no misinterpretation there.

JO: All right. Well, I'm glad you're one of the ones that do great in class 'cause I was on the other end of that spectrum and I think we were responsible for finding the younger classmen to do our homework for us. So you've just kind of taken out that whole step there in a more sophisticated way. So well done. Props to you.

HO: Definitely think it helps that I brought it up to the principal and to the faculty and to the staff and got it approved wink wink beforehand.

JO: Okay. Okay. Nice little disclaimer there. So let's lead to kind of what you're seeing in the real estate industry right now with AI.

HO: Well, right now you can use AI for property descriptions. And we're seeing this all the time through realtors where you upload the information about a property, give it to an AI and AI gives you something that more or less accurately represents the property. You just wanna be able to go through and revise it as what the AI gives you because it doesn't have the same knowledge you do. And it's gonna have some wrong information at least as of right now. So common phrases such as tranquil setting and beautiful Oasis and magical appeal that the AI commonly uses in multiple different settings doesn't come across as false advertisement. It should also be something that properly represents the property.

HO: So you wanna be able to go through and replace the false information with more relevant factual statements.

JO: Well, I think that's important to reiterate the factual statements. I think a lot of people would like to use AI as a tool, but then they don't go in and tweak it and finalize it to clearly represent their properties. And unfortunately what that leads to is misrepresentation. I mean, you used a couple of terms that I've seen a lot and that is tranquil setting and irrigated Oasis. And then we get to the property and there's like two acres out of a hundred that are irrigated. And I mean, that's nothing but misrepresentation. And so folks, you've gotta make sure that if you're using this, you're using it as a tool to assist, not a tool to replace. So just make sure you're clearly representing what the property is and even what it's not. I'm a big believer that if there's some negatives out there, then you don't need to spend those to a positive just to try to get a sell done because you're gonna just only end up upsetting buyers, agents and other brokers and clients that come to look at the property.

JO: So make sure you're clearly representing what the property is and what it is not.

HO: Right and AI is always gonna be a better tool if it goes through and revise work that has already been done, as opposed to trying to create new work from scratch. So instead of you going through and revising the AI's work, if you let the AI revise a little bit of your work after you've already put in all the information so it doesn't need to create something new, that's always gonna end up being a lot better. You can also use AI in the photo editing landscape, though, we have tools such as Adobe Lightroom and Luminar Neo, which are incredibly powerful and useful that may allow you to take different photos taken at different brightness levels to get a clearer view of the sky and a clearer view of the shadows when it would otherwise be blown out. That's what we call an HDR photo. So instead of having to go through and do that manually, you can just let the computer do all that work for you. It can also automatically fix the color of one image to match the color of another.

HO: So if photos were taken at different cameras or slightly different lighting scenarios, such as if it's overcast or not, then the photo taken with your phone and the photo taken with your camera can appear less out of place when mixed with professional photography or different lighting situations. Luminar Neo can also upscale images to make them a higher quality if they're pixelated when sent through text or match photos side by side to make them wider, such as a panoramic shot. Other tools such as Dream Machine by LumaLabs can make a still photo accurately move in 3D space for use in videos.

HO: The danger comes when new resources are coming out, which can make incredibly realistic videos from nothing but a prompt. And these can be indistinguishable from real videos, whether it's a drone shoot or not. Tools such as OpenAI's new model coming out, Sora, cannot and should not ever be used in the real estate market as it is not a perfect representation of what is being sold. Photos and videos such as these are used all the time in media and entertainment purposes. But you shouldn't use AI to, say, create a video of an elk moving through a property as this would be a misrepresentation and subject to real estate ethics violations. That being said, using AI to make your voice sound better or to talk in another language in a video or podcast to reach clients who do not speak English is useful in the industry. It will always be a balance of keeping an honest explanation of what is being sold. And if you can save money by using AI tools to make your life more efficient without sacrifice, then maybe you should. It's not a one and done solution, though.

JO: All right. So you used a lot of big words there. So for those folks that aren't in Generation Z, those of us that are a little older, let's go back in and kind of dissect that a little bit. So you talked about the photos and the images within the photos. And so give us a couple examples. I mean, I think what you're talking about is, if you're taking the photograph of a ranch and there's there's a broken down piece of equipment that's right there on part of it, but then it gets moved within a couple of days. You've got AI software that will allow you to remove that equipment. It's no longer on the property. It's not a misrepresentation, but that's a totally different example than overhead transmission lines that are running through the land and removing those from the photos 'cause now you're stuck dealing with misrepresentation. Is that is that kind of what you're talking about? 

HO: That's exactly what I'm talking about. You can remove power lines and remove objects, and now you can't see them in the photo. And while it does make it a better photo, it's not an accurate representation of what the property looks like at that time or any time. And now with generative AI, you can make a dry stream look like it's full of water, even when it's not in that season, which is also misrepresentation.

JO: OK, yeah, yeah, I totally agree. I mean, out here in the West, we've got seasonal runoff that comes from the snow melt and we may get some streams that run, April through May, but then come June, definitely July and August, they're bone dry. So hopefully there's not anybody that's putting water in those streams and photographs in August. But I didn't even realize that was a that was a possibility. Man, that's crazy.

HO: Definitely crazy, and it's not very hard to do either, and it's just gonna be getting easier.

JO: Now, there was something else you mentioned about creating a video from a prompt. Give us can you give us a little bit more example as far as what you're referring to there, something that maybe our listeners might be familiar with? 

HO: Right, so OpenAI, who's the company that created ChatGPT, recently made a text to video model, which it's incredibly good. This has been out before, but it's always been easy to tell the difference between a real video and a fake one. Now you can look anywhere. And just by asking this AI to create a drone view of waves crashing against a cliff in Big Sur's Garay Point Beach, you can now have a drone video looking indistinguishable from someone who actually went there and Did this exact same thing, but if you're doing this for a property to say add an elk to an already existing video, walking through a forest or walking through this property, nine now that's false advertisement.

JO: Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I can't even imagine that. So you don't even have to get your drone out. You can just say, hey, give me a give me a drone shot 100 feet off the air of the Red River between Texas and Oklahoma at this certain geographic location. And it'll spit the image out as if it's flying up and down the river.

HO: It will based off of previous information and previous data, it will create a new video that looks exceptionally like exactly what you asked for. Some trees may not be in the right spot and the river may not be one to one what you would do if you took the drone out and did it yourself, but it is exceptionally close. And in media, entertainment, whatever it may be, is a great filler to put spots in if you have a tight budget.

JO: Man, that's crazy. All right. Something else you mentioned was getting different languages, translating it. So are we in an age now where we could, we could take this whole podcast and translate that to another language and send it out with a click of a button? Or do we have to record it a certain way before we send it out? Or what do you see in there? 

HO: Right. So ElevenLabs is one of the top producers for this type of market where you can take text that you write and create a voice out of it or change your voice from one thing to something else. So if we just gave ElevenLabs our podcast, then it's gonna look at it, understand who's speaking, understand their voice fluctuations and what their voice sounds like to translate their voice from English to Spanish or whatever Translation you want it to be, essentially, it's just at a click of a button.

JO: Man, that's that's crazy. I mean, can you go in and actually pick to sound like other people's voices instead of your own? Or is it just that you can change the tone or the depth? Or can you type like somebody's name in and say, OK, I wanna sound like this person? 

HO: Just about all of it. I mean, you can't say I wanna sound like this celebrity if they haven't given their approval by the company to have their voice used in such a way, but you can train it on yourself by saying a very detailed prompt and matching the words word for word. And now it understands your voice and you can go in and in the program, feed it more information such as your previous podcast, and now it knows what you sound like and can better match your voice. But yeah, it's not very difficult to change a prompt and sound like you're speaking Spanish and accurately, too.

JO: OK, man, so we gotta get the rights. But hey, sounds like there might be an opportunity there for the Casey Mox and the Dan Murphy's of the world to sell the rights to their voice for future podcasts, man. We might have to look into that and talk about that when we get off the air. All right, so what are you seeing in the AI industry? Like where is this gonna go? Maybe maybe give me like a floor ceiling level in the next two years. This is likely going to happen in the real estate industry. And man, in the next 10 years, I think it'd be absolutely crazy. But we could be looking at this. What do you think? 

HO: Right now, there are already virtual tours of a house that you can do, but you can't move around everywhere, only where a 360 degree camera was placed. Not far in the future. I don't see why it wouldn't be simple enough to move anywhere you want by piecing together different photos and videos and 3D scans with your phone to create a house where you can move anywhere you want. And through that, be able to create a PDF file of the floor plan of a house or a room down to the exact millimeter. Get the room sizings and the dimensions and further into the future, probably less than 10 years from now. I don't see why in addition to these virtual tours, you wanna be able to replace the floors in real time from carpet to wood or remove a wall and add new furniture or strip everything already there.

HO: All to help with a renovation vision. As this is being done, you could also create an incredibly accurate price estimation based off the location and current market for what these renovations would cost. All done in real time.

JO: Man, that's crazy. My head's spinning right now 'cause just this morning, I made a new listing live, 200 acres with an old farmhouse built in 1966. And there's not much value at all given to the farmhouse. But I mean, I totally track what you're saying because if somebody could go in and take a look at that, and we all know buyers, they lack vision, right? That's why investors make money on fix and flips. That's why contractors make money on remodel projects because buyers lack vision. And so what you just described is a world where a buyer can look at a property online, change the green or the brown shag carpet to some modern hardwood flooring or some nice granite counters instead of some old laminate counters, and also be synced up to a contractor's or a builder's specialty website that gives them up-to-date pricing on not only what the material would cost, but the labor would cost to install that.

JO: And then instead of waiting 30 days for a proposal from a contractor and trying to schedule all these site visits with the floor guy and the plumbing guy and the electrician and everything else, they can have a few clicks of a button and have a full remodel proposal in a matter of minutes is what it sounds like.

HO: That's exactly what it is. It may not be 100% accurate or 95% accurate, but then again, the proposals from people that you're going to aren't either. So by having a machine that you can do this on your phone, then you can have that visual representation of not just what you're looking at and thinking and the vision that you have, but also through the market and through the landscape and through what prices cost at that given moment for where you are and how far you would need to go to get the resources for this renovation, then you could have maybe even a more accurate representation of what this would cost, at least for that exact time.

JO: Man, why do we have to wait 10 years for this? Why don't you go ahead and start trying to create that so I can apply it to this farmhouse and we'll see if it doesn't help sell my listing, man. Right. All right. Let's talk about another cool feature with AI, and I'll call it a proofreading tool. We had that commercial warehouse release and was able to get that locked up. It started with a two-page letter of intent that spelled out the terms. We had the $10 a square foot. We had the $5 a square foot for tenant improvements. We had the number of parking spaces that were gonna be included, escalation clause that was on there for an annual basis.

JO: All of these terms, went back and forth a couple of times and we finally get the LOI executed. Of course, we turn everything over to the owner's attorney and the owner of the building, his attorney comes back with like this 30-page lease, and we wanna make sure that everything we agreed to in the LOI is spelled out properly in the lease. So, there was the platform that we uploaded it to through AI that we uploaded both documents to compare. And sure enough, there were, several mistakes in the lease document that were not supposed to be there.

JO: They didn't have some of the terms right that was in the LOI. And I had no clue that technology was available. I mean, to proof the LOI, all right, that doesn't take too long. That's two pages. But then you start talking about the, really hour, maybe two hours that are involved to go through this commercial lease document and make sure that everything is spelled out correctly.

JO: Then go back and compare it to the LOI. We're talking about hours of people's time and AI did it in, I'm gonna say it was like 30 seconds. So, talk about that kind of tool and how other realtors can be using that to their advantage.

HO: So, AI can be a great tool and a great resource to help you just go through and proofread something to make sure it has everything you need, like you were saying. But it's just that it's acting like another person when done correctly, and it shouldn't be the only person you use for this type of revision. Even then we have through OpenAI, a bunch of different models that you can use with the free plan. And then if you get the pro plan, right now there's GPT-4, GTP-4 Omni, and some models are gonna do better than others.

HO: So, GPT-4 isn't gonna think as much before it actually responds. It's gonna make good predictions to try to address what you're asking, but it's not actually thinking about it. GPT-4 Omni, and as I'm sure a lot of future models think about what it's going to respond with, cross-referencing everything back and forth multiple times over before it does have a response. So, it isn't gonna have those same inaccuracies. So, if you're gonna use an AI as a proofreader, I just encourage y'all to look at a bunch of different models and do your research and understand what it is you're using before you rely on that to be 100% accurate.

JO: And even then, cross-reference it with other sources and other people to proofread it, not just an AI tool.

JO: Well, Hunter, thank you so much for joining us today. Remind our listeners where they can go to learn more about you and what you're doing.

HO: Well, thank you. I have a website that you can see @orbith.hunterosborn.com. That's orbith, O-R-B-I-T-H.hunterosborn.com. Osborne is spelled O-S-B-O-R-N.

JO: Folks, if everybody listening, if you want more formal training on this topic or any of the other topics that we cover in RLI, be sure to go to the rliland.com website, click on the Learn tab, and we've got our upcoming courses listed under there. We've got them offered all over the country as well as online. And I'm always happy to hear any ideas that you might have for new topics or new courses that you'd like to see in the works. And always remember, for more expertise on land real estate topics, be sure to check out the RLI blog, follow us on social media, and of course, tune in for the upcoming episodes of the Voices of Land podcast.

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