AI Privacy Concerns, ChatGPT Image Editing & AI-Powered SEO for CRE
Welcome to the ChatCRE 2nd Edition
In recent discussions with CRE pros about using AI tools, there’s one recurring topic that seems to keep people from using AI in their day to day work: Privacy concerns. In fact, I recently ran a poll on X to see how many folks had such concerns.. And of the people that answered, it was most of them.
These concerns take many forms, but the most common one seems to be around the concept that if you upload information to ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini (Bard), etc., that platform will then “train” their AI models on that information, and other people using the platform may be able to somehow access that information.
For a long time, these concerns seemed completely valid, especially when articles like this one surfaced last year about Samsung banning use of ChatGPT in the workplace after their engineers uploaded proprietary code to the platform, over fears that it would get exposed to others outside the company. At this point I feel compelled to say I am not a cyber security or data privacy professional, but I’m happy to pass along information I’ve found on this topic so you can make your own decisions. A lot has changed since that Samsung article was written - for one, ChatGPT released a setting for free and paid accounts that you can turn on to stop ChatGPT from training its models on your conversations. You can see how to turn it on here.
Another critical change has taken place since then in that tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot now offer “professional” subscriptions - And more importantly, they claim that they DO NOT train their LLMs on conversations had with their platforms under these professional-level licenses.
So, that’s the starting point: If you’re paying for a professional-level AI tool, the well-known ones claim that they DO NOT train their bots on your conversations or information. For your convenience, here’s a quick run down of what those are:
AI Tools with Professional Licensing (That Don’t Train Their Models On Your Conversations):
It’s important to note that I haven’t spoken with reps from these companies, but these platforms all claim they do not train their LLM’s on conversations had in these pro-level platforms. Use your discretion, buyer beware, etc.
ChatGPT Teams: $30 per user (2 user minimum). You can learn more about ChatGPT Teams in this great writeup from my friend Ashley Francis at Kitchen Table Automations. It lets you have separate or shared workspaces for the people on your team.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 (URL Below): $30 per user. This ALSO provides you access to Copilot for every day Microsoft tools like Outlook, Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Teams, etc. I’ve included a video demo of how you can use Copilot in Excel for CRE data at the bottom of this newsletter. And you can find a demo on how to use Copilot for Powerpoint in last month’s newsletter.
URL (Substack is having trouble embedding this link): https://adoption.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/
Claude Pro: $20/mo - I have NOT used this tool recently, but apparently, it has undergone some recent updates that enable it to rival, if not surpass, ChatGPT.
Google Gemini Business: $20/mo - It is worth noting that Google’s release of Gemini has had a lot of issues. Google maintains that Google Gemini Business is part of Google Workspaces and that the same privacy statement for Workspaces applies to Gemini.
So, if you're using one of these pro-level platforms, the providers claim they are not training their models on your data; they don't share it—it's encrypted, etc. But what else should you consider if you want to use AI tools to analyze confidential information, or to work on proprietary materials?
For a lot of CRE pros, this will mean using AI to analyze commercial lease agreements or similar documents. So I reached out to #RETwit favorite, Anna Lee Alford - CRE Leasing Lawyer (@CRELeasingLawTX) to discuss the topic. Anna Lee, the driving force behind ALA Law, PLLC, boasts a wealth of experience from her tenure at both boutique and top-tier law firms, leading in commercial leasing law. I should mention that while Anna Lee IS an attorney, I am NOT her client and this AIN’T legal advice. The goal of this chat was to offer some perspective on the topic from a CRE pro who knows a thing or two about dealing with confidential documents, so here we go.
(Note: The writeup below is a summary based on my notes from our conversation - This was a wide-ranging chat, so the comments below from Anna Lee are summarized and not direct quotes.)
Enter Anna Lee:
My first question for Anna Lee was pretty point-blank: These AI companies claim they AREN’T training their models on our conversations, data, etc., when people use their professional subscriptions. Can we trust them when they say that?
The answer: Kind of. "We don't currently have any specific reason to believe they are using our data to train models when they specifically state that they aren't. If they did so, that would open them up to a lot of liability. So I think it’s fine to operate with a similar level of trust that we do with other platforms that handle our data. Which is to say, trust but verify/ take precautions where you can”. In a whole host of ways, we’re already trusting these companies to act in good faith with our data. Anyone who uses Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, or Gmail, or Google Workspaces has endless amounts of professional, and likely confidential information on the servers of these companies, and every day we assume they aren’t going to misuse that information. But that doesn’t mean people shouldn’t take precautions with what they upload to ChatGPT or other platforms.
What precautions can people take when uploading business information to AI?
A starting point is anonymizing your documents before uploading them to an AI tool. Business docs are often limited to business information, but you don’t want to upload someone’s personally identifiable information (PII) to AI platforms - this is info that could be used to identify, contact or locate an individual. States have different laws about how you need to protect people’s PII on your own network, let alone uploading it to an AI platform. You can also take the extra precaution of removing specific pieces of info from the document - An example Anna Lee gave is pricing information in non-disclosure states. If you want to analyze property price information for your internal database, you may want to consider removing anything from the intel that someone could use to tie the price to the actual property. That said, there’s no PERFECT outline of exactly what information you should consider removing, because it’s ultimately going to come down to your comfort level with using these tools, and that they’ll stand by their promise to not train their tools on your info, that they’ll keep their servers safe, etc..
Are there other steps CRE pros should take if they’re going to use AI in day to day business operations?
One protective measure you might consider is being transparent with your clients in that you are using AI to provide them a more effective level of service, and letting them know that you take reasonable steps to protect their information when doing so. For other attorneys who may use AI for document drafting, this could look like language added to their engagement letters, for brokerages, it may be worth adding a small section on the topic in their listing agreements or marketing proposals. This way all parties are informed ahead of time that documents relevant to your service may be uploaded to AI platforms.
Given Anna Lee is a leasing attorney, I had to ask..
How do you feel about AI’s ability to help with legal-related tasks like lease summarization:
“I don’t use AI on a recurring basis, because the work involved in my practice doesn’t include many repetitive tasks.” Anna Lee specializes in commercial leasing, but she works across retail, industrial and office projects, providing a lot of diversification in the work. Anna Lee went on to say that there is a place for AI in the CRE legal world for tasks like lease summarization, and populating simple documents that you use over and over again. “You don’t want to use AI as an excuse not to do legal work, but you can use what it gives you as a starting point.. Current sentiment is to treat AI outputs as work from an intern or a first-year associate. You can let it take a swing but don’t plan on presenting the as-is work.” The reason for this is that AI tools still make stuff up, even if it’s only 3% of the time like some claim, and you can’t force it not to. “At this point you can’t remove the risk of it making stuff up”.. Which isn’t helpful if it’s writing legal briefs based on case law that doesn’t exist.
My personal take on this topic:
You need to use the right tool for the job. If you have a meeting coming up and very limited time to review related leases, or if you’re new to a property and need to review high-level info from a lot of leases quickly to generally understand the projects - These seem like no-brainer use-cases for using AI for lease summarization. If you are performing a lease abstraction task that is closer to “the bottom of the funnel”, IE documenting lease details to have in your official records on a new acquisition, or for putting together your final valuation of a property, you probably want to have a person involved.
So what’s all this mean?
There are options for telling AI tools not to train themselves on your conversations, but it doesn’t hurt to take precautions when uploading business information to AI.
Still have concerns about privacy with AI? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll continue to provide updates on this topic in future newsletters. Feel free to ask specific questions and I’ll do my best to find an answer if I don’t already have one.
Perhaps you’re thinking “That’s great, but how do I actually USE these tools to summarize a lease?”
I’m so glad you asked!
The ChatGPT Lease Summarization Prompt:
Summarizing leases using ChatGPT can be difficult because you’re asking it to go through a lot of information at once, and it can get confused. So I built a prompt that simplifies the process by breaking it down into individual steps for ChatGPT.
Upload your lease, and this prompt will summarize rent schedules, CAM exclusions and co-tenancy clauses in seconds. It will pull these things one at a time and submit for your approval before continuing on to the next step - this stops it from getting confused. You can have it pull other components of the lease too, but you’ll need to customize the prompt. And as previously mentioned, be careful about how you’re actually putting this into use.
Here’s a link to the prompt: Take it for a whirl, and let me know what you think!
If you found this prompt helpful, and think it could help someone else in your network, consider sharing it with them.
AI Image Editing in ChatGPT:
If you follow me on X, you may know that I think AI's ability to create and manipulate imagery is going to translate into one of AI's largest impacts on the commercial real estate sector. You can read more about why here, but the short version is that once you can walk through a vacant space with a tenant, and reimagine the space for their use on your phone, in front of them, in a matter of minutes or seconds, you remove the bottleneck that is lack of imagination, and CRE transactions will start happening much faster. Things will accelerate further when you can take an AI-generated video walk-thru of a space fully built-out to your specs just by strapping on an AR headset. But it’s unclear how long all of that will all take to materialize.
This past week, ChatGPT took a big step towards this future by releasing the ability to EDIT images created on the platform.
Here’s a quick rundown of some ways you can use it for CRE images, and some ways that you can’t.. yet.
And here is a helpful video tutorial on how to actually use it.
The next step is for AI tools to allow you to edit and reimagine existing photos, or at least recreations of them, which I estimate will happen in 2024.
AI-Powered SEO:
In my opinion, one of the best use-cases out there for AI is to improve your marketing, and using AI to help with SEO is a no-brainer.
I recently put together a short, seven-step guide on X for how to get started using AI to improve SEO. I won’t post the whole thing here, but if you want to get your website to rank higher on Google and you want to use AI to do it, you can read the thread here.
ICYMI: A GREAT Podcast Episode on Using AI in Commercial Real Estate Brokerage
Mark Duclos Featured on “The Industrial Real Estate Show” from Chad Griffith
I spend a lot of time searching for content about using AI specifically for CRE, and this was one of the best pieces \I've seen on the topic. Mark Duclos, President of Sentry Commercial, and SIOR, discusses how their brokerage is leveraging AI for marketing, and the benefits of using Custom GPT’s. Watch the podcast here.
(Image from Chad Griffith’s “The Industrial Real Estate Show” Youtube page)
Speaking of Custom GPT’s:
I'm going to do a deep dive on GPTs and how to make one in my next newsletter, along with a tutorial video showing how to do it step by step.. BUT, the next newsletter won’t be out for another month and I’ll likely be releasing the video on X before then. If you want to see the tutorial as soon as it’s out, give me a follow on X and you’ll be the first to see it. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to know about Custom GPT’s, ask in the comments.
Last but not least: Using AI with Microsoft Excel - A QUICK Tutorial
In the last newsletter I included a poll asking if folks would like to see more tutorial videos on using Copilot for Microsoft 365, the answer was a resounding yes - So here’s a quick video tutorial on how to use it for Excel.
Copilot for 365 essentially gives you AI capabilities right inside Excel, Word, and the other Microsoft tools you use everyday. If you’d like to learn more about it, I wrote a little more on the topic in last months newsletter.
Holy smokes this was a long newsletter..
I like the idea of keeping this to a monthly newsletter so it’s not one more thing clogging up your inbox. But AI is moving fast and it’s a lot to cover in a monthly newsletter. Would you be interested in receiving a SHORTER version of this newsletter 2X per month instead? Let me know in the poll below.
That’s It, That’s All
Thanks for joining for the 2nd edition of ChatCRE - I’d love to hear what you thought. Feel free to comment with what you liked or could do without, or send me a message on X. If you found this helpful, please consider passing the newsletter along to a friend: