Check out our new The REAL AI Podcast for this week – Episode 48 10/12/26 – AI-generated with hosts Miles and Grace

REAL AI:  AI doing good, Free AI Webinar for MLS pros, AI stats and facts, headlines, and AI quote of the week

By Kevin Hawkins with Korey Hawkins | Oct 12, 2026 – Vol. 4 Issue 41

REAL AI is the industry’s first and most popular weekly AI newsletter and podcast, keeping real estate agents and brokers on top of the AI developments that matter most to save you time and stay safe. Want more? Buy the NEW EDITION of The REAL AI Guide for Real Estate Agents on Amazon. 

AI Doing Good

Has AI’s bad behavior been getting all the headlines lately?

From rogue AI agents deleting emails without permission to AI bots escaping their security sandboxes, fixing prices and even kicking someone out of a gym class, the headlines have been pretty scary. I’ve been sharing these stories because they’re real, and the risks are serious. But AI has another side that isn’t getting nearly enough attention.

At the Ai4 conference a few months ago in Las Vegas, I heard three pioneers of modern AI, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li and Andrew Ng, discuss a growing concern: The constant stream of frightening AI headlines is drowning out the extraordinary good AI is doing.

While they all outlined risks, they also recognize that focusing too heavily on what could go wrong can overshadow what AI is already accomplishing, discourage innovation and invite government regulation that could stifle progress. That’s a concern we shouldn’t ignore.

The good, the incredible and the unbelievable

While yes, some AI agents are going rogue, researchers also are using it to do some extraordinary things. And these aren’t futuristic promises. These are real developments from 2025 and 2026:

Breast cancer: A clinical trial involving more than 31,000 women found AI-assisted mammography detected 15% more cancers while reducing radiologists’ workload by nearly 64%. Nature Medicine

Cancer: AI can now identify some early cancers and precancerous lesions from ordinary chest CT scans, validated in a study involving more than 80,000 patients. Nature Medicine

Antibiotics: MIT researchers used generative AI to design entirely new antibiotic candidates to fight dangerous drug-resistant infections. MIT News

Medical discoveries: An AI research system called Robin identified promising potential treatments for a leading cause of blindness, helping scientists generate and test new hypotheses. Nature

Ancient history: A new AI model called Apollo is helping researchers reconstruct damaged, 2,000-year-old Greek texts, potentially unlocking history hidden for centuries. Austrian Academy of Sciences

That’s AI doing good. And it’s just scratching the surface.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

What does any of this have to do with real estate agents? Plenty, because while scientists are pushing the boundaries of AI, many agents still think generative AI is primarily a tool for writing listing descriptions and Facebook posts.

Here are some tasks that agents may not even realize they can do with a pro chatbot:

See and solve: Photograph a broken appliance, mysterious part or computer error and let AI identify the problem and suggest step-by-step fixes. Can’t connect to your open house Wi-Fi or get your office printer to connect to your phone? Ask ChatGPT Business.

Create and recreate: Generate professional graphics, then change specific elements while keeping the original composition more consistent than ever. Although not always perfect, agents are discovering they don’t even need Canva or Photoshop to create some stunning social graphics and presentation slides today from scratch.

Talk to your transaction: Virtually eliminate hallucinations with Gemini Notebook by creating a file or bank-grade security vault for every transaction. Fill it with inspection reports, title, disclosures, the appraisal and HOA documents, and it becomes a searchable resource and chatbot that answers questions about only this one transaction.

Find your blind spots: Ask AI to evaluate your entire client experience, social media and digital marketing campaigns or current business processes to identify weaknesses and recommend improvements.

Make sense of chaos: Transform handwritten notes, messy spreadsheets and market statistics into organized information, useful insights and client-ready graphics. Or leverage one disorganized concept into 10 clever content pieces for an entire campaign.

Crawl. Walk. Run.

Here’s what I tell agents in my AI classes: You don’t need 20 AI tools. You need one or two safe ones, and you need to learn how to use them well.

Don’t confuse using AI with handing over control of your business to an autonomous AI agent. There’s an enormous difference between asking AI to analyze your email and giving it permission to delete messages. Safe AI isn’t optional. It’s table stakes.

So use AI every day. Learn it. Push it. Experiment with it. Have some fun with it. Just keep the human in the middle – always remember the HIM and the HER.

The greatest good AI can do for real estate isn’t replacing what agents can do. It’s making the people who use it better at what they do. (-Kevin)

AI Facts + Stats

1. 31% of Realtors surveyed said they are only experimenting with AI occasionally.

2. 59% of Realtors surveyed said the greatest barrier in adopting AI is the cost.

3. 52% of Realtors surveyed said they utilize AI for creating emails and follow-ups.

4. 30% of Realtors surveyed said they use AI for market summaries.

5. 25% of Realtors surveyed said that Claude is their primary AI tool that they use.

Source: 2026 NAR Realtors Technology Report (-Korey)

AI Headlines

Meta’s New Muse AI Agent Read My Private Messages. I Never Asked It To | 9/19/26 Inc.
Concerns about AI agents accessing personal data beyond what users expect or approve continue to grow.

Should you use an app to score a news release? | 10/7/26 WAV Group
AI scoring tools can help, but opaque methods and privacy practices make blind trust risky.

Man Says He Was Mortified When His AI Agent Posted His Bank Balances and Exactly What He’s Spending His Money on in a Slack Work Channel | 10/7/26 Futurism
Broad access can let AI agents expose sensitive personal data in unexpected ways.

New eXp agent tools simplify showing swaps and AI integrations | 10/8/26 Real Estate News
ShowGo streamlines coverage while the MCP connects agents’ preferred AI assistants to brokerage data.

The New Red Flags of Real Estate Fraud | 10/5/26 NAR
AI is making scams harder to detect, increasing the need for transaction verification.

Realtor.com’s MLS-backed search tool gets an AI sidekick | 10/7/26 Inman
RealAssist tracks buyer preferences, creates searches and suggests next steps using MLS data.

How AI is changing the apartment search: Is it working? |10/7/26 Palo Alto Online
AI can simplify rental searches and tours, but its limitations are prompting new transparency rules.

Let the Dots Do the Follow-Ups: What Transaction Management Providers Should Build Next | 10/5/26 WAV Group
AI agents can now focus on transaction tasks and deadlines while leaving key decisions to humans.

Cotality’s Property Intelligence Joins Inside Real Estate’s AI Platform | 10/6/26 RISMedia
Streams will use predictive property data from Cotality to identify high-intent leads and improve agent workflows.

Google got you found. Now real estate agents need to win over AI | 10/7/26 HousingWire
Strong reviews, local content and consistent profiles can improve an agent’s visibility in AI recommendations. (-Korey)

AI Quote of the Week: FC Barker aka “Freakclown” – Hacker & Author

Here’s THE book on SAFE & PRACTICAL AI for agents – the newest edition of The REAL AI Guide for Real Estate Agents buy this bestseller on Amazon. Story ideas? Email korey@wavgroup.com.