A former president of the lettings agents’ trade body Propertymark is warning of the rise of AI-generated complaints.
Greg Tsuman says: “With the rise of AI, we have seen a spike in complex and intricate complaints. We are now having to spend time and effort addressing multipart points and complaints that are sometimes without grounds.
“AI tends to be very much user-biased – it can tell you what you want to hear, and it can lead people into a potential false sense of awareness where the complaint might be without true merit.”
He explains how his agency deals with AI-generated complaints: “We have got a complaints procedure designed for the AI world. The first point would be for the relevant office to deal with the complaint and then it would get passed on to the department head, and finally the compliance team.
“We have now started using AI to help summarise and analyse the substance of potential correspondence because if you are looking at a document that spans several pages of A4, that quickly becomes a very time-intensive task. We don’t use AI to respond to complaints, but we use it to do the heavy lifting so that we can see the wood from the trees. We then rely on human expertise to make a response.”
Moving forward, Tsuman feels it should potentially be mandatory under The Property Ombudsman’s rules for any complainant to disclose if AI was used to construct the correspondence.
“AI shouldn’t prevent any complaint from going ahead because it may have assisted in making the communication clearer for the respondent to review. The aim would be to prevent potential spurious complaints that might be seen as a ‘scattergun’ approach, where tenants might potentially end up including details which aren’t correct or are taken out of context,” Greg added.
Ben Stokes, President-elect of ARLA Propertymark and again a lettings director, has also noticed a spike in AI-generated complaints.
He says it’s being used to merge knowledge from the internet about previous proposed government bills, such as the Renters’ Reform Bill, and therefore point users towards information that is no longer accurate.
“It can be difficult to navigate AI complaints that someone has not written, especially when the legal stance is not correct. We check them carefully and respond in a way that points tenants in the right direction. The biggest thing we are finding is that AI tools are empowering people to complain about things and blow small situations out of proportion.”
Conversely, the exciting potential of AI for the property industry has been highlighted by Phil Spencer, founder of Move iQ:
“AI has huge potential to make the property industry more efficient and improve the way we work. Agents who embrace it and use it well will be in a strong position, but technology can only take us so far. There’s no substitute for human expertise, experience, and judgement.”
However, he also had some practical advice for agents:
“As AI makes it easier for people to create complaints, including ones that may contain inaccurate information, property businesses need to be prepared. It’s worth reviewing the processes you already have in place so your team can quickly identify what’s factually correct and what isn’t, without it becoming a distraction from the day-to-day job.”
