NAR urged to lobby for AI laws requiring human oversight in real estate

Kruglyak emphasizes that real estate transactions involve fiduciary duties and life-changing financial decisions, which generative AI, due to its probabilistic nature, cannot reliably handle alone. He quotes AI safety expert Gary Marcus, who stated, 'We cannot allow mission-critical industries to outsource consumer protection to generative AI, which simply is not reliable enough. Human-in-the-loop oversight is a legal and ethical necessity.'

The author advocates for 'licensee-in-the-loop' legislation, which would legally require a licensed human practitioner to review, approve, and sign off on any real estate licensed activity performed by an autonomous software system or agentic AI bot. This human licensee would retain full, non-delegable legal and fiduciary accountability. Kruglyak argues that this approach must be driven at the state level, as real estate licensing and consumer protection are state-based powers, and a federal-only strategy creates dangerous loopholes.

He calls on trade associations to return to their core mandate of protecting the public and to spearhead legislative efforts with strict statutory penalties and enforcement programs against unaccountable AI platforms.