The damage when what you see is not what you get
Our opinions and attitudes are shaped by what we see. Take, for instance, the world of celebrity. Photoshopped waistlines, airbrushed skin, Grok deepfakes and in 2026, the speculation that an entire set of wedding photos splashed over the tabloids depicted AI people and not real humans (we’re looking at you, Katie Price).
When images don’t accurately represent the truth, trust is broken and people – or brands – go down in our estimation. The matter is even more acute in our AI world, where it’s getting harder to distinguish between fact and fiction (OK, so the three hands is a giveaway).
Property, however, sits at a curious crossroads when it comes to (mis)representation. The Digital Markets, Competition & Consumer Act 2024 covers photographs and videos used by agents to sell or let a property. There is license to edit, not alter, images.
Replacing grey clouds with blue skies? Airbrushing a bin from a bathroom? All perfectly fine in the pursuit of a polished end result (our professional property photographers are skilled at legitimate edits) but anything that mispresents or misleads is off the table. Stretching an image so a room looks wider, removing an overheard electricity cable or editing out a damp patch would be in breach of the Act.
Representation takes a different turn when it comes to brand new homes. Housebuilders actively market a development, a lifestyle and a feeling before ground is broken. Some of the more *ahem* experienced marketers at HD remember when wispy watercolour images were commissioned but realism became the way forward.
Today’s artists don’t wield a paintbrush. They operate cutting edge software and are masters of the mouse. Computer generated image is a misleading name as it's actually the artist who do all the generating, painstakingly and meticulously creating each ultra-realistic CGI.
Our artists work with the rawest data possible: architect’s plans, technical drawings, hundreds of precise measurements, specification sheets, topography reports, images of materials and finely-honed client briefs. All of these needs manually interpreting, inputting into the software and manipulating by hand.
It’s about now that you might ask why we don’t cut time and costs by using AI to generate CGIs. There are multiple reasons why we don’t, primarily the issue of trust. There was already a swell of suspicion around edited and fake images but a scientific paper published by the International Journal of Information Management in 2025 provided a stark warning for marketers and their clients.
Entitled AI Images and Consumer Trust: customer reactions to generative AI vs. real images, data scientists explored our relationship with unreal representations. The findings are a wake-up call for anyone wanting a quick AI win:
Customers avoid services advertised by AI-generated images versus real images
The rejection of AI is greater for high-involvement decisions and hedonic services
Customers distrust AI-generated images, which are perceived as lacking veracity
No matter how long you spend prompting Gemini or ChatGPT, and despite feeding it relevant documents, it will not produce images that are suitable for off plan property sales. Buyers view CGIs in good faith and if they are not accurate in any way, the housebuilder responsible will commit a criminal offence and a misled buyer may have grounds to take legal action against them.
When you are marketing homes off plan, it is almost* impossible to use photographs but that also means any images you use have to be as close to reality as possible. With CGIs from HD Marketing, there are no schoolboy errors.
Roof tiles, brick stock, weatherboarding and render will be accurately represented. We won’t add in non-native plants that would never grow at that site. Accurate reflections will appear in mirrors. Where the sun sets matters. Where shadows fall matters. Dimensions changed after the first draft? A human will make adjustments until it’s right.
The public backlash against the use of AI in property marketing is growing, as detailed in this article. Reputations can be ruined and trust broken with just one bad, generated image. Don’t leave it up to an AI robot to create a truthful vision of your most lucrative asset. You’ll undermine the intelligence of prospective purchasers and leave a sour note of disappointment.
Our CGI artists can explain their processes in granular detail and unlike AI, you can email, call or meet with our team to shape the images to meet your exact brief. Contact HD Marketing to commission a set of property CGIs.
*HD produces photomontage CGIs where our CGI images are integrated with real phots of the surrounding landscape.