I Hate AI as a Real Estate Agent. I Also Use It in Almost Every Part of My Business.

Watch the full episode on YouTube · Subscribe to @LyneaCarver

I absolutely hate AI. I also use it in pretty much every aspect of my business. When I tell you those two things, that is not a contradiction. Both can be true.

This is 2026, and any entrepreneur knows that if you want to get ahead, you have to implement AI. I teach real estate agents how to run an AI-powered business, and I still hate parts of it. I’m specific about what I hate. I’m going to walk through those here, and I already told you I’ll follow up with what I actually like about it.

If you know me, you know I can talk a long time about AI. Yesterday I was on a call with a friend, telling her how we’re using AI in real estate businesses right now, and she said, “Why are you not doing more YouTube videos about this?” Hence this video. I even have notes, because perfection is not the key to success. Doing the work is.

I hate AI shiny object syndrome

The first thing I hate is the line everyone repeats: adopt AI or get left behind. We’ve known robots were coming since I was a kid watching Short Circuit, and some people still treat AI like a fad that’s going to go away. It’s not. I want tools to make our lives easier, not take over who we are.

What’s happened instead is a wave of AI “gurus” teaching real estate agents how to have shiny object syndrome. I sat on a leaders call where the person running it had an entire coaching program around AI, and the whole thing was, “Did you know you can do this with AI?” A lot of it was prompting, the same “write me a video about X” stuff we’ve been doing since ChatGPT first came out.

Then he went a level up and started talking about doing CMAs with AI. I was floored. He told people they no longer had to do their own comparative market analysis. Just plug the address into ChatGPT and let it do the CMA. I watched the Zoom chat light up: “So cool. What’s the prompt? What’s the prompt?”

If you are a real estate agent and you want sellers to work with you in this market, you should want to pull your own comps. You should want to do your own pricing. That’s part of what sets you apart. Use AI to tell the story better, identify the buyer, and give yourself more ammo. Do not decide you don’t have to run a CMA anymore because a tool can do it. That kind of thinking is how real estate agents get taken out by robots.

The other side of shiny object syndrome is the tool swirl. I started using ChatGPT around 2021, even ran Instagram trainings on why I loved it. Then I switched to Google Bard, which became Gemini, and I went all in. I learned the Google Workspace, Notebook LM, the whole stack. Gemini was the first tool I really absorbed. Then the internet tells you to drop it and go learn Grok, or Perplexity, or Claude, or ChatGPT again.

I couldn’t have gone all in on Claude when Claude was still in baby steps. Master the tool in front of you. I built my business in Gemini first, and now there are places Claude can take over operations. If you keep hopping, you end up with fragmented tools and nothing actually getting done. I’m not immune. I’ll tell people not to do it, then ask whether Grok could do it better.

I hate AI slop

You can tell which platform wrote someone’s content. ChatGPT loves a laughing emoji when nothing is funny. Claude loves contrast framing: “it’s not this, it’s that.” I see it constantly, and most people do not talk like that in real life.

The websites are worse. I build my own site with Claude, so I’m not throwing stones from a glass house. But I read a marketer’s site, a video editor’s site, and a real estate agent’s site, and they all had the same layout and almost the same language. “You want it, I ship it.” If you’re a real estate agent, what are you shipping? A house?

Real estate agents are not lazy. We are trying to do a gazillion jobs at once, which is why AI caught on so fast. We want time back. That’s what this is supposed to do. But if you don’t take time on the front end to extract what you actually know and feed it into one preferred tool, everything you put out looks like everyone else’s. AI slop has to stop. Master one tool until it does the work the way you want, over and over. Then you can go look at other tools.

I hate AI video used as a replacement

I also hate talking-head AI video used as a stand-in for you. Something is better than nothing, and I get why an agent who doesn’t want to be on camera reaches for a tool. What I see more often is it becoming a crutch. You’re “posting content” because an AI version of you is on camera, instead of using the tool while you learn the skill.

We’re already in a low-trust moment. I barely answer my phone. If I watch an agent’s profile and it’s all AI videos of her talking, that replica is not going to be in the room at the listing appointment. The way I look down when I get passionate, the nuance in a face: a replica does not do that. An AI market update reading stats is not you.

You can disagree with me. I’m okay with that. I have not yet been convinced that replacing a human on camera builds more trust.

I hate automations that create more work

The last thing I hate is AI automation that creates more busywork. Leverage is a skill. You have to spend time, money, and energy learning it. If you half-install a pile of automations, it will feel messy forever. Automations break. AI hallucinates. I have taken five steps forward and ten steps back. I have spent money and not always gotten a dollar return. I have gotten a return on my time.

I used to work 70-hour weeks in my real estate business. Today I work about 7 hours a week in it. That did not happen because I threw random automations at the wall. It happened because I learned how to put the right ones around the business I actually wanted, so selling houses could be a choice instead of a payday panic.

AI can help your real estate business flourish, and it can also be the thing that kills it. Stop the shiny object hop. Stop the slop. Stop using AI video as a replacement for you. Stop installing random automations you haven’t learned. Pick one tool and master it. I mastered ChatGPT, then Gemini, and now Claude. The benefits I have now did not come from the shortcuts I just told you to drop.