AI房产“照骗”横行:帮你看清梦想之家,还是让你掉进陷阱?

It is twilight on a desirable street in Chiswick, or it could be Hampstead, Wilmslow or Hove.

奇西克一条受欢迎的街道上正值黄昏，也可能是汉普斯特德、威尔姆斯洛或霍夫。

A spectacular sunset has left a vivid stripe of orange fading into a violet sky.

壮丽的日落留下了一道鲜艳的橙色条纹，渐渐融入紫罗兰色的天空。

Against this saturated backdrop, a large Victorian house is clearly outlined despite the darkening atmosphere, perhaps thanks to the lights blazing from every single room.

在这浓郁的背景下，一栋维多利亚式大宅的轮廓清晰可见，尽管天色渐暗，也许是因为每个房间都灯火通明。

The effect is dazzling, in an unhinged, halfway-through-an-exorcism way.

效果令人目眩，带着一种近乎疯狂的、仿佛驱魔仪式进行到一半的感觉。

It is also quite obviously fake: a digital trick previously achieved with software such as Photoshop, but increasingly using quicker, cheaper AI programs.

它也明显是假的：这种数字技巧过去用Photoshop等软件就能实现，但现在越来越多地使用更快、更便宜的人工智能程序。

If you are one of the many Britons for whom browsing expensive property listings is a big pastime, you'll be familiar with the dusk shot, one of the many ways estate agents try to make their wares stand out in the endless scroll of Rightmove, Zoopla and Instagram.

如果你是众多把浏览昂贵房产信息当作一大消遣的英国人之一，你一定对“黄昏照”不陌生——这是房产中介在Rightmove、Zoopla和Instagram的无尽滚动中，试图让自己的房源脱颖而出的诸多手段之一。

It is a level of artifice that most of us are prepared to overlook.

这是一种我们大多数人愿意忽略的雕琢手法。

We understand we are being sold a dream and we are generally happy to be transported to a world untroubled by the energy crisis, nosy neighbours or natural shadow.

我们明白自己被推销的是一个梦，而且通常也乐于被带入一个不受能源危机、爱管闲事的邻居或自然阴影所困扰的世界。

But only up to a point, as estate agents at a branch of Winkworth in south London discovered recently.

但凡事都有个度，正如伦敦南部Winkworth一家分店的房产中介最近所发现的那样。

A disgruntled homebuyer took to Reddit to grumble that the reality of a property they viewed through the agency did not match up to the photos, some of which had been AI-enhanced.

一位不满的购房者在Reddit上抱怨说，他们通过该中介看的一处房产，实际情况与照片不符，其中一些照片经过了AI增强。

They said the home was in poorer condition and felt smaller than it appeared in the listing, and that a chimney breast had been removed in the imagery.

他们说房子状况更差，感觉也比房源信息中显示的更小，而且图片中的壁炉架被修掉了。

It was only later, said the prospective buyer, that they noticed a disclosure of AI enhancement on some pictures.

这位潜在买家说，后来他们才注意到有些图片上标有AI增强的说明。

Winkworth took down the images and said the use of AI staging was merely to help buyers "visualise the potential of a property" and had always been disclosed online.

Winkworth撤下了这些图片，并表示使用AI布景只是为了帮助买家“设想房产的潜力”，并且一直在网上有说明。

Judging by the strength of the response to the Reddit post, this was not a one-off experience.

从Reddit帖子的反应强度来看，这并非个例。

In the AI era, house hunters regularly come across questionable images in listings, a practice known as "housefishing".

在AI时代，购房者经常在房源信息中遇到可疑的图片，这种做法被称为“钓鱼房源”。

One friend spotted the same north London house listed with two agents who had each staged it with different AI-generated furniture.

一位朋友发现，伦敦北部同一栋房子被两家中介挂牌，各自用了不同的AI生成家具来布置。

Another, searching for a country house last Christmas, was confronted with a barrage of The Holiday-style snow-furred cottages.

另一位朋友去年圣诞节找乡村别墅时，看到了一堆《恋爱假期》风格的雪中村舍图片。

"I just couldn't believe agents thought that was what buyers wanted to see and then actually followed through on it," he says.

“我简直不敢相信，中介觉得那就是买家想看的，而且还真的这么干了，”他说。

"AI is simply the latest way of putting lipstick on a pig," says buying agent Nina Harrison of Haringtons.

“AI只不过是给猪涂口红的最新方式，”Haringtons的买方中介Nina Harrison说。

"I recently had a client send me details of what he thought was a fantastic new instruction. It wasn't. It was the exact same house we'd already viewed and rejected. The photographs had been refreshed, the marketing rewritten, and it looked so different online that he didn't recognise it. If I hadn't spotted it, he would have gone back to view the same house for a second time."

“最近有个客户给我发来一个房源详情，他以为是个很棒的新挂牌房源。其实不是。那正是我们已经看过并拒绝过的同一栋房子。照片更新了，营销文案重写了，网上看起来完全不同，以至于他没认出来。要不是我发现了，他就会去第二次看同一栋房子。”

The use of AI images can stray from the ridiculous to the vexatious, as in the case of one first-time buyer who made the 75-minute drive from her home in south Wimbledon to Maidenhead to view a house listed for £635,000, which had been dressed and cleaned up with AI.

AI图片的使用可以从荒谬变成令人恼火，比如有位首次购房者，从温布尔登南部的家开车75分钟到梅登黑德，去看一栋标价63.5万英镑的房子，这栋房子经过了AI的装扮和清理。

"The main bedroom was pictured online with a big bed with bedside tables and a large wardrobe. We walked in and thought: 'Huh, OK, this wasn't what we were expecting.' You definitely couldn't have fitted any of that furniture in there alongside a bed."

“网上主卧室的照片里有一张大床、床头柜和一个大衣柜。我们走进去心想：‘嗯，好吧，这跟我们想的可不一样。’你绝对不可能在房间里放得下那些家具，外加一张床。”

She and her boyfriend chose not to confront the estate agent about the misleading images of the bedroom: "We were still at the stage where we needed agents to help us and alert us to things that were coming on to the market".

她和男友选择不去质问中介那些误导性的卧室照片：“我们还处在需要中介帮我们留意市场上新挂牌房源的阶段。”

But that experience did make the couple more sceptical of the listings they were viewing.

但那次的经历确实让这对夫妇对他们看的房源信息更加怀疑了。

They learned to avoid anything that had even a whiff of AI about it, and approached properties with very low expectations.

他们学会了避开任何哪怕有一丝AI气息的房源，并且带着很低的期望去看房。

Things were not always this way.

事情并非总是如此。

Back in the 90s, when many of today's senior estate agents were starting their careers, it was frequently the agents themselves taking the photos – squeezing into awkward corners to capture the best angles and dashing the film roll to the high street photo shop for speedy processing, says Andrew Marshall, now a sales director at Hamptons.

回到90年代，当时如今许多资深房产中介刚刚开始他们的职业生涯，通常是中介自己拍照——挤进狭窄的角落捕捉最佳角度，然后把胶卷送到商业街的照相馆快速冲洗，现在是Hamptons销售总监的Andrew Marshall说。

A maximum of three images would make it into the physical brochure, and a set would also be dropped off with the advertising department of the local paper.

最多三张照片会出现在纸质宣传册里，另一套照片还会送到当地报纸的广告部。

When fisheye lenses became commonplace, Marshall says, it was still largely the agents themselves wielding them at first. "It was only for very special properties that we would hire a professional photographer," he says.

Marshall说，当鱼眼镜头变得普及时，起初主要还是中介自己在用。“只有针对非常特别的房产，我们才会聘请专业摄影师，”他说。

Even in Hampstead in north London, where high house prices meant professional photography was the norm, James Morton, now an associate director at Goldschmidt & Howland, recalls spending much of the early 90s gluing photos into brochures to be stuffed into envelopes and posted out.

即使在房价高昂、专业摄影已成常态的伦敦北部汉普斯特德，现在是Goldschmidt & Howland副总监的James Morton回忆说90年代早期他花了很多时间把照片粘进宣传册里，然后塞进信封寄出去。

It was the launch of a new online property listings portal called Rightmove in 2000 that heralded the widespread professionalisation of property photography.

2000年，新的在线房产门户网站Rightmove的推出，预示着房产摄影大规模专业化的到来。

Ben Gutierrez launched his agency Photoplan Bookings two years later and now operates throughout the country.

Ben Gutierrez两年后创办了他的公司Photoplan Bookings，现在业务遍布全国。

"Once companies like us came along, the guys who were still showing up with their cameras round their necks, measuring up for floorplans while they were trying to win the instruction, didn't look so professional. They started to have the air of a one-man band," he says.

“一旦像我们这样的公司出现，那些还挂着相机、拿着卷尺来测量平面图的家伙，就显得不那么专业了。他们开始有点像是独奏乐队，”他说。

And so a new era of heavily stylised, visually led property listing, where the sun always shines and the grass is always green, was ushered in.

于是，一个高度风格化、视觉驱动的房产挂牌新时代——阳光永远灿烂、草地永远碧绿——到来了。

"We've always added blue skies to photos, we've always brightened images, we've always used wide-angle lenses, we'll take out a bin here or there if we need to," says Gutierrez.

“我们一直都在给照片加蓝天，一直都在调亮图片，我们一直都用广角镜头，如果需要的话，也会在这里或那里P掉一个垃圾桶，Gutierrez说。

"Our level of editing is minor: we're taking out clutter or adding furniture if a client wants virtual staging (much cheaper than the old-school method of renting physical furniture to photograph) – anything that can be moved. We're definitely not changing anything structural. We're making the property look the best it can, not altering reality."

“我们的编辑程度很轻微：我们会移除杂物，或者如果客户想要虚拟布景（比租用实体家具拍摄的老方法便宜得多），就添加家具——凡是可移动的东西都可以。我们绝对不改变任何结构性的东西。我们是让房产看起来尽可能好，而不是改变现实。”

That doesn't mean clients don't sometimes ask, says Doncaster-based photographer Ben Harrison, who works throughout the UK.

这并不意味着客户有时不会提出要求，总部在唐卡斯特的摄影师Ben Harrison说，他在全英各地工作。

"I've been asked to remove a load of houses behind a property so that it looks like it's on its own on a mountain. I've been asked to erase an electricity pylon. There was a house that had a boiler on the wall and they asked me to remove it in the photos because it would put people off. I say no every time. People are going to view the properties and they're going to see the other houses, or the pylon, or the boiler. It's about trust: if you're selling a product, it needs to look like the thing people are buying."

“有人要求我P掉房子后面的一排房子，让它看起来像是独自坐落在山上。有人要求我抹掉电线杆。有一栋房子墙上挂着一个锅炉，他们要求我在照片里把它去掉，因为会让人反感。我每次都拒绝。人们会去实地看房，他们会看到其他房子、电线杆或锅炉。这是信任问题：如果你在卖一个产品，它就必须看起来像人们要买的东西。”

The law agrees.

法律也认同这一点。

Although the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991 was repealed in 2013, real estate listings are now covered by the Digital Markets,

虽然《1991年房产虚假描述法》已在2013年被废除，但房产挂牌信息现在受《2024年数字市场、竞争和消费者法》的管辖。

Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

《2024年数字市场、竞争和消费者法》的管辖。

This says that "it is an offence to knowingly or recklessly provide false or misleading information which causes a consumer to take a different transactional decision than they would otherwise have".

该法规定，“故意或鲁莽地提供虚假或误导性信息，导致消费者做出与其本来可能做出的不同的交易决定，即属犯罪”。

The National Trading Standards office says that while not explicitly prohibited, in its view the use of AI to edit property listings to mislead consumers contravenes the act.

国家贸易标准办公室表示，虽然AI并未被明确禁止，但其认为，使用AI编辑房产挂牌信息以误导消费者，违反了该法案。

If they think a property has been misrepresented, buyers should complain to Citizens Advice or to local authorities' Trading Standards teams.

如果购房者认为房产信息存在虚假描述，应向Citizens Advice或地方政府的贸易标准部门投诉。

Penalties can include imprisonment, fines and bans from estate agency work.

处罚可包括监禁、罚款和禁止从事房产中介工作。

"Consumers don't complain often enough," says buying agent Henry Pryor.

“消费者投诉得不够多，”买方中介Henry Pryor说。

"The legislation is really clear: if something has been misrepresented, then you have recourse and the penalties will sting. But as long as images are clearly labelled where they have used AI, the law is reasonably relaxed – and in my opinion it should be. An awful lot of people lack the imagination to see past what is physically in front of them. People should not be misled, but it's not misleading people to help them understand what a property could look like."

“法律非常明确：如果存在虚假描述，你就有追索权，处罚也会很严厉。但只要使用了AI的图片被明确标注，法律就是相对宽松的——而且我认为本应如此。很多人缺乏想象力，无法看到眼前的物理现实之外的东西。人们不应该被误导，但帮助他们了解一处房产可能的样子，这并非误导。”

"Similarly, if an estate agent has taken the photos at 3am when there's no traffic, it is on you, the buyer, who is potentially about to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds, to find out what the street is like at rush hour. It is not an estate agent's job to give a fair representation of a house; it is their job to – legally, honestly and decently – sell it on behalf of their client."

“同样，如果房产中介在凌晨3点没车的时候拍照，那么作为买家——你很可能要花几十万英镑——就有责任去了解那条街在高峰时段是什么样子。公平地展示一栋房子不是房产中介的职责；他们的职责是——合法、诚实、体面地——代表客户把它卖掉。”

Speaking of clients, many of the agents I speak to say it is usually sellers who pile on the pressure to show homes in the most flattering light.

说到客户，我采访过的许多中介都说，通常是卖家施加压力，要求以最有利的方式来展示房子。

"Most sellers will say to us, 'Can you just take that car out?' or, 'We're about to redecorate the house; can you just change the colour of those window frames?'" says Daniel O'Brien, director of estate agent Aucoot.

“大多数卖家会跟我们说：‘你能把那辆车P掉吗？’或者，‘我们马上就要重新装修了；你能把那窗框的颜色改一下吗？’”房产中介Aucoot的董事Daniel O'Brien说。

"I think you need to know where your moral compass lies."

“我觉得你需要知道自己的道德指南针指向哪里。”

As Pryor says, it is not necessarily misleading to show how a home could look with new furniture, or even a total renovation.

正如Pryor所说，展示一套房子配上新家具甚至全面翻新后的样子，未必就是误导。

After all, agents have been using CGI to sell as-yet-unbuilt homes for decades.

毕竟，中介们用CGI来销售尚未建成的房子已经有几十年了。

The crucial point is that computer-generated or heavily manipulated images should be labelled as such.

关键在于，计算机生成或经过大量处理的图片必须加以标注。