Real Estate Sessions Rewind - Craig Grant, Founder RETI.us talks AI at the High Tech High Touch Summit in Buffalo New York - October 2023

00:00:00 - Bill Risser

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another Real Estate Sessions rewind episode. There have been a few of these lately, and it's because in my new role with Fidelity National Financial, I'm still getting kind of settled in, and it's kind of tough to find time to book a guest for a new episode. However, I promise they're coming. But in the meantime, I've got hundreds to choose from. And this week, we're going to go back to October of last year when I took one of the High-Tech, High-Touch Summit sessions that Jeff Chalmers and Lisa Biggars put together. And it's with Craig Grant talking about artificial intelligence. Now you're going to think, wow, this is just eight months ago. This can't be relevant. Well, I'm telling you, Craig Grant is one of the people at the forefront, and some of the things he's talking about back in October are actually happening now. So it's really interesting to go back in time and see how forward thinking Craig is. So let's get this thing started. Thank you again for listening to our real estate session.

00:00:55 - Craig Grant

Rewinds so anytime you have a generated content, I don't care if it's written, imagery, anything, you don't want to just copy and paste and use it immediately. You got to make sure that every aspect of it is accurate. So you want to fact check things. You can ask for sources and go check with those sources are correct. You should legal check it everything before you go. Use that in the public or in your marketing.

00:01:23 - Bill Risser

You're listening to the real estate sessions, and I'm your host, Bill Risser. With nearly 25 years in the real estate business, I love to interview industry leaders, up and comers, and really anyone with a story to tell. It's the stories that led my guests to a career in the real estate world that drives me into my 9th year and nearly 400 episodes of the podcast. And now, I hope you enjoy the next journey. Hi, everybody. Welcome to episode 366 of the Real Estate Sessions podcast. As always, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for telling a friend. Today we have a very unique episode. I interviewed Craig Grant. This session was recorded at the Hitech High Touch summit in October of 2023 at the Buffalo Niagara association of Realtors. Yes, Jeff and Lisa, through results consulting, has created this one day session. This event combines technology with, as Jeff likes to put it, ships, friendships, relationships which lead to championships. So this interview is a session on artificial intelligence. AI, it's all the rage. Craig's in high demand around the country, speaking at associations about AI and the future of AI in the world of real estate. Let's get this thing started. I hope you enjoy my interview with Craig Grant at the high tech High Touch Summit in Buffalo, New York. Craig, welcome to the podcast.

00:02:36 - Craig Grant

Thanks, Bill. Thanks for having me.

00:02:38 - Bill Risser

Yeah, well, look, we're here in Buffalo, and it's been wonderful talking to this crowd, and we've been teasing them for the last few hours that we're going to talk a lot about AI. And this is opportunity. So I'm going to get this thing started right off the bat. First things first. Should we be worried about our safety and security? Is this, is AI coming to destroy us?

00:03:00 - Craig Grant

Do you want the real answer? Do you want me to sugarcoat a little bit for the crowd?

00:03:04 - Bill Risser

Let's go somewhere right in the middle.

00:03:07 - Craig Grant

Yeah, I mean, so there are some very legit concerns with AI. I'm sure you guys have heard all about the doomsday type stuff where, you know, could AI become self aware and could it tank the stock market or start killing people? Kind of like terminator type stuff? And the reality is that is a legit concern. And even some of the biggest people working on these projects admit they know they're working on something very cool and transformative, but they also know they're working on something that could really cause all kinds of major issues. So there is some legitimacy to the fear, but at the same time, a lot of these companies are trying to build in guardrails to hopefully make that not happening.

00:03:45 - Bill Risser

You're telling me we should be slightly worried. But look, when it comes to online security and what Google knows about us, that cat's way out of the bag, right?

00:03:55 - Craig Grant

Way out of that. Yeah, you and I were talking about this. It really, every decade or so, another major thing comes into the market that does the same kind of fear. You know what I mean? You go back 25 years ago, it was just the start of the Internet was going to end us all. Then it was social media was going to end us all. I mean, they're each kind of big movement does come with some concerns. This one, it's just evolving so rapid, rapidly that it does have some people kind of freaked out or scared. But there's no putting this back in the bag. Like AI is now out in the wild. Everyone's using it, loving it. But again, hopefully some of those fears don't come to fruition.

00:04:34 - Bill Risser

All right.

00:04:34 - Craig Grant

All right.

00:04:34 - Bill Risser

Well, we'll hope the good guys beat the bad guys. We generally tend to do that overall, so we just need to continue that. That hope. Let me ask you this question. Chat GPT. I think when we think when we talk AI, it's always chat GPT because they were the first to really come to market and have something that was free and then now they've got a paid version. But it feels like to me it's like the band Aid or Kleenex of AI. It's just become generically known as Chat GPT. But there's a lot of competition. I mean it's growing, it seems like weekly.

00:05:06 - Craig Grant

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and by the way, I talk about this all the time. AI has been around since any of us. I mean it's been around for over 70 years, you know, but for the first, let's say 69 years of its existence, we were using AI all the time without realizing it. I mean, our gps is like so many things are using AI, but it was always kind of pre packaged to us by a company saying, here's how to use our AI tool. What chats BT really did was it flipped the script and made it available to everybody to use however you wanted, whether it's creating content, whether it's figuring out your business plan, whatever, you could use it however you wanted to use it. So it did kind of break that mold and made it available to everybody and that's why it got such big press and it constantly is getting buzz. But like you mentioned, it's not the only option in town. And in fact, I mean you look at tools like Google's Bard or Microsoft's Bing chat, which is based on chat GBT, but Microsoft has gone further in certain areas with it. I mean it's definitely not the only game in town. And when I talk about AI, I always tell people you might want to play with a couple of them and see which one you think is the best one for how you're going to use it in your business because JackGBT is not the end all, be all. I mean, in my opinion, Google Bar does some things way, way better. So does Microsoft Bing chat, so does Jasper. I mean there's a few options out in the marketplace that are just as good or if better in certain areas. And it is like they're leapfrogging each other every other day. Like every week or so, one of them makes another major advancement, another announcement of a new cool feature that makes it better than the others, and a week later another one leapfrogs it again.

00:06:46 - Bill Risser

Yeah, and there's also some very specific AI platforms out there that work really well with video or work really well with images, right?

00:06:58 - Craig Grant

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, and don't be wrong. You can use chat GBT now to do imagery. You used to have to go to Dolly to do that. Now it is being built in, integrated in the chat DBT. But there's other image generating tools mid journey and stable diffusion stability, that, in my opinion, create better kind of imagery than chat GPT and Dolly have been doing. And again, to me, it's another example of play with each one, see, which one do you think is the best, how you're going to use it?

00:07:25 - Bill Risser

Yeah. For people here in the audience, my question to you is, what is a simple way to get started? Because we're going to talk over the next 20 minutes very deep into the world of AI and what it can do. But like many things in real estate, in technology in general, it can be overwhelming. So what's a simple thing someone could do just to get that first taste?

00:07:51 - Craig Grant

I mean, to me, it's no different than any other new technology. Just get in there and play with it and don't be afraid of it. I mean, you can start off with some pretty basic prompts, have it do little things for you, like help you come up with idea generation or, you know, help you write a property description, whatever, and then you'll kind of, like, see just how powerful, how cool it is. And then you can continue iterating and tweaking until you really can really use it to its extent for your business. Because the reality is the possibilities of how you can use it is limitless. I mean, you can use it for every aspect of your life and in your business these days. And just like you've been saying, like, now there's companies coming out with new tools all the time to tie into these products to make them even more specific and better.

00:08:40 - Bill Risser

Yeah, you, you use the word prompt, and that's going to prompt me, Craig, to go a little deeper with that word, because the deeper I pay, the more I pay attention to what's happening in this new world. It seems to me that the prompts really are like, you must understand how to use those effectively, how to layer them up on top of each other, all these amazing things you can do. But if you. It's a garbage in, garbage out thing going back to the old days of computers, right?

00:09:15 - Craig Grant

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and again, that's another thing where you just have to kind of get in there and play with it and keep trying to add in a little bit more as you go until you really figure out how to do proper prompting. But the prompt is the instruction or the task you're putting into these tools to have it create something for you, whether it's a custom image it's generating, whether it's that property description that's writing for you, mapping out your marketing plan. I mean, again, the possibilities are really endless of what you can do with it. And you won't really know until you get in there. Start playing with prompting. Now, the other thing is, there are tools now that can, if you can't figure it out, where they've already done the prompting for you. Like there's tools like AIPRM or chat guide and a few others, Promptpal, where they just have libraries of thousands of prompts ready to go. Or if you can't figure this out, just use one of their existing prompts. So, you know, the, the whole idea, though, is again, get in there and play, and then you'll start understanding some of the capabilities. Or just use a tool that already has it built in.

00:10:20 - Bill Risser

I've heard that you can have, you know, put in a prompt of a rather lengthy prompt. It's, maybe it's a paragraph or two, and then the result that comes out, you can say, great, now use this result in some other prompts, and then you can continue really fine tuning to, like this nth degree, this result you're searching for. Am I right with that?

00:10:46 - Craig Grant

Yeah, I mean, so, and that's something I teach all the time when I speak on AI is when you do an initial prompt, the first thing you can do is iterations. So the words you could, let's say you put in a very generic prompt and it kicks out, let's say that article for you. But you're like, you know what, this is too long. It doesn't really focus on the topics I wanted to focus on. So you can go back and iterate or tweak as many times as you want. You can say, okay, this is great, but now make it shorter. This is great, but now please focus on rising interest rates or whatever it is that this thing's about. So you can tweak and tweak and tweak until you get the best possible result you're looking for. So those are called iterations. And then the other thing that I always coach, and this is where, to me, the power of the prompts gets to another level, is when you can do what are called sequences. So a sequence is when one prompt builds on a previous prompt. So an example I always give in my classes or events is your first prompt. Could be something like, hey, give me the top 20 ideas that I should block or post about on social media for a realtor in my market trying to reach first time home buyers. So that first prompt would kick out a list of those 20 ideas, and then your second prompt, the sequence, could be, now go write me the blog post for idea number one in that list, and idea number two and idea number three. So the program remembers your initial prompt, and then you can build on top of it. And then once you have your 20 blog posts written out, then your third prompt in the series could be, now grant me a 90 to 122nd video script for idea number one in the list, an idea number two, and idea number three. So, like, when you start understanding how you can tweak and iterate, and then you can build out sequences, this is what can really allow you to kind of map or plan out your whole year's worth of content in a one sit down session.

00:12:43 - Bill Risser

Wow.

00:12:44 - Craig Grant

Yep. Wow.

00:12:45 - Bill Risser

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So that's. I think that. I think everyone here has got the same expression. I do. It's like, wow, not realizing how deep this could go. Yeah. Let me ask you the tough question, and this is important. We have certain people in the room that will want to hear your answer to this question, but what are the compliance issues for realtor use? Right. There's a few things that realtors can and can't do.

00:13:09 - Craig Grant

Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, you got to understand the source of content in the AI databases is everything on the Internet. And we all know there's a lot of false, misleading, and just bad information out there on the Internet, and that's in the system. So you talked about the crap in crap out. Well, that's potentially in the content. So anytime you have a generated content, I don't care if it's written, imagery, anything, you don't want to just copy and paste and use it immediately. You got to make sure that every aspect of it is accurate. So you want to fact check things. You can ask for sources and go check with those sources are correct. You should legal check it everything before you go. Use that in the public or in your marketing. And when we talk about legal checking, one very specific law that you got to be really careful of in the real estate world is fair housing. So, for example, a tool like chat, Jibtira Bard doesn't know about fair housing. So if you ask it to write you a property description with infringing things in your prompt, such as perfect for a young family, it'll kick out a property description with young family in it. Which would be a violation because you're talking about familial status, right? So it wouldn't know that it's creating a violating thing unless you ask it to refer to fair housing laws. So for example, you can say factoring in federal fair housing laws might write me this property description. And then it would do its best to compare the fair housing laws to your property description. Make sure there's nothing offending. So that's one thing is always be careful, check everything. And AI imagery really struggles with things like bias. So like if you ask it for a picture of, let's say a young family, it's pretty much going to be an all white traditional family every single time. So it just kind of uses what's the most common pictures in the database to check out your new image. So in the marketing world we have to be as representative possible. So you got to understand that and sometimes adjust your prompts to overcome that bias. So for example, you might want to put into your prompt a young hispanic family, asian, african American, whatever, or mixed if you're looking for more variety in the imagery in your marketing, because it will kind of kick out stereotypes with bias. And then there's the one biggest question when it comes to AI content, is it even legal for you to use in your marketing? And the answer is, as of right now, everything generated with AI is 100% legal and safe to use. And the reason is the US Copyright Office basically said they don't want to get involved in this. They really want the legal system to figure it out. And there are several cases that have been filed trying to sue for AI generated content, including a few cases against the copyright office. So eventually one of those cases, or maybe more than one cases, will play out and set a legal precedent. But until then, everything generated with AI is legal and safe to use. So run with it and love it. And by the way, very recently both Microsoft and Google have said they will defend anyone who gets sued for AI generic content using their tools.

00:16:26 - Bill Risser

All right, I'm going to call this next question shock and awe time. This is, I think I've been blown away by what's doable right now because I would talk to you or Alex or other people and say things like, well, I mean, how long will it take before we can do this? And your response is always the same, Craig, you go, that can be done right now. That's being done right now. So let's break down the different sections if you will. Because I look at video different than I do, audio different than I do, say presentations or text. I guess all of this is content, right? In some way, shape or form. But like for example, in the world of video, right? There is a tool out there that lets me read a teleprompter and fixes the fact that I wasn't looking at the camera. What's the name of that one? And let's go down that path. Let's just break down a few of these different things that can be done right now.

00:17:23 - Craig Grant

Yeah, so I think, I'm pretty sure the tool you're talking about is descript. Descript can do all aspects of video creation and editing using AI. So for example, you can use it to create the video content. You could say, in scene one, I want a video clip generated of a man and woman running down the beach holding hands at sunset. In scene two, I want them eating at a kitchen table. Scene three, I want them in front of a house with a sold sign. It'll generate each of those clips and basically create your video with AI. You can also use it to edit video with AI. So for example, let's say you did a three minute video recording of you speaking. Well, you can say, I want you to trim out anytime I said Ums or ahS. And I want you to remove this part of the video by just editing the script and fully edit your video using AI and what you're talking about with the eye fixing or eye tracking. They recently added that in as well. So you could be staring down at your phone reading a script the entire time, and then the software will fix it to make sure you make it look like you're staring at the camera the whole way. So that's one called descript. It's becoming really popular because it's again, using AI, just about all aspects of video editing and creation. So pretty cool.

00:18:39 - Bill Risser

One, I actually used a script myself, right, for the audio component that it does as well, because to be able to take out ums and ahs and to fix that whole piece of the podcast, you know, interview, I think is fantastic. So it's come a long ways. I guess when I first started using it, I wasn't as happy. But like everything, every generation just gets better and better.

00:19:01 - Craig Grant

Yep.

00:19:04 - Bill Risser

Let's talk about presentations. I think this is amazing, right? Agents and coaches and trainers are always trying to put together the latest, greatest presentation. Talk about some of the, some of the tools that are out there in that realm.

00:19:19 - Craig Grant

Well, I mean, first of all, we really haven't talked about canva at all. Canva has become a category killer for so many things, like I've been saying for years that it's so amazing just from the graphic design standpoint where you can use it to build out any of your marketing materials. And last year they added in an office suite to it where you can create word documents and presentation slideshows and spreadsheets and everything. And then recently they've rolled out a whole suite of AI tools. And so the one of them they've added in is called magic presentation, where you can basically just give it an outline, it'll build the slide deck for you using AI, or just give it a topic and it'll build out a slide deck for you. So that, I mean, that's pretty amazing. I mean, there's other ones outside of canva, like beautiful AI and a few others that are doing similar things. But I mean, literally, if you don't have the skill or the whereabouts to build out your own slide decks, there's tools like canva beautiful that are now doing it fully for you.

00:20:22 - Bill Risser

There's also the ability for companies, and I know there are some companies that are doing this. For example, there's some franchises that are using AI and it's not going out and searching the entire Internet. It's only looking at the database that they're telling it to look at. So I could go to my, I can go to my app and I can say, tell me how many deals I've done this year and what's my commission so far, and it will just dig that out of the company business, company information, and supply that back. And of course that's going to be self contained. It's a walled garden, right? It's only people that have the login credentials to get into that AI. I heard someone say that, why couldn't you just take some MLS data as an agent and drop it into a chat GPT and say, and analyze this for me and tell me how things are going? Is that possible?

00:21:10 - Craig Grant

Absolutely. So the way tools like chat, TBT and bard work is they're scraping the whole public Internet, right? Like what's out there that's not behind a login or a firewall. So typical tools like chat, GBT or Bard can't get into your MLS data unless you provide them access to it. So for example, you can provide a link or you can provide a file and upload that, let's say a PDF file of all the data and reporting and say, go through and analyze this and provide me summaries and charts out of it. So as long as you provide it, the source of the material. Now it has access to it even though it's not on the public Internet.

00:21:51 - Bill Risser

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. I mean, we're being told constantly, or agents are being told constantly that, hey, show that you're the expert in the area and show that you really know the local market and now you can just generate these amazing results from that data. I think that's going to be great. So let's continue down that path a little bit. Craig, in your mind, what's the long term view? And I know that's hard to do because especially it's changing so fast, but what would your long term view of the impact of this explosion be on real estate?

00:22:27 - Craig Grant

I think it's going to change just about every aspect of real estate. Like there's that whole argument, is it going to eliminate realtors? Is it going to do that? I don't think it's going to eliminate realtors, but I do believe that there's not going to be 1.5 million realtors in the industry a few years from now. I think AI is going to create another level of super realtors who have way better customer service and way better communication because they're utilizing these tools. But I think every inch of real estate is coined a chance because of AI. The way we communicate with our customers, the way we market to them, just the day to day job of Realtor, how listings are entered into the MLS is going to change how properties are searched and found. The process of an agreement, how long it takes to get closing, I think is going to completely change and be affected by AI. So I really do think it's going to change almost every inch of real estate.

00:23:25 - Bill Risser

Craig, what you just said there just kind of jogging my memory. We seem to have forgotten a bit about blockchain and ledgers and smart contracts and all that great stuff. My guess is there's some way AI can help make that even easier for most of us. Is that true?

00:23:40 - Craig Grant

Yes. Yeah. So several of our industry vendors, I'm sure you know, some of the same people I know a lot of them are talking about how they're actively working right now on how they can really leverage AI to expedite and streamline the transaction process and make it more secure all at the same time. Because I always say, like, the real estate industry in so many ways is still pretty archaic. Like, we're still doing contracts even though we're using stuff like smart contracts. Starting to seep in a transaction is still the same now as it was 20 years ago. And a typical transaction. I always say it's a miracle if you can get a contract to closing in under 30 days, unless it's all cash. Right. And the longer it takes for a transaction to happen and the more steps it has to go through, it opens up opportunities for cybercriminals to jump in for things like wire transfer, fraud, or just to manipulate the process because there's so many hands in the cookie jar. So a lot of our vendors are trying to figure out how we can streamline that process, eliminate some of those steps, reduce the amount of human involvement in the contract and underwriting and all these things, and basically just try to make the whole transaction more secure at the same time.

00:24:53 - Bill Risser

Yeah, Craig, this has been amazing. I'm looking at the clock. We've got to move on to the next session. But first of all, if someone listening here in the room or someone listening to this on the real estate sessions wants to reach out to you, what's the best way they can do that?

00:25:09 - Craig Grant

Pretty much. I mean, I would say either through the Reti Us website. So it's just reti us. There's a form at the bottom of the site that's always a good way to contact me or if they're looking to possibly hire me as a speaker, there's my site, which is craiggrant Dot in fo Dot.

00:25:26 - Bill Risser

Awesome. Craig, first of all, I owe you big time for putting this together. And second, I am going to make sure that you and I connect. And we do a regular episode where I'm going to dig deep in your past. We're going to have some fun, and then we're going to talk about Reti us and a lot of other things. So it'll be very that that's coming. I just want you to be prepared for that.

00:25:46 - Craig Grant

All right, sounds good.

00:25:48 - Bill Risser

Craig, thanks again for all your help today. This has been an awesome, awesome session and we will. I will talk to you soon.

00:25:56 - Craig Grant

Okay, sounds great.

00:25:57 - Bill Risser

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