Thoughts on AI in Property Management? Laziness or Necessity?

[Becca Brown]

This is a sort of litmus test for me, so please be honest (but kind lol): What are your thoughts on AI in property management? If you utilize it, then to what extent? I've seen some people implementing chatbots for tenant FAQs in order to ease the load of their employees. That seems ethical and harmless. But I think there's a line, and I'm wondering where some of you draw it.

When I was a tenant, for example, the PM company would send us email updates & notifications about community events. Near the end of my tenancy, they started sending emails that were corny & clearly copied from ChatGPT. It kinda annoyed me that they wouldn't even type emails for their tenants anymore (the staff was also SO unhelpful and mean, so this small thing just added to my annoyance). 

PM tech has always and will always be super vital, so I'm not an AI hater by any means. Just wondering how you're all moving forward with this new tool. What tasks are you willing to automate, and what tasks do you refuse to automate?

[Theresa Harris]

To me it is them being lazy. If they want to send an email, then write out a few sentences. A lot of tasks aren't that hard and getting AI to do it often takes as much time as doing it yourself.  If there are questions tenants ask regularly, then have a FAQ page where they can get the answers (without a need for them to log into anything).

I'd much rather have a phone tree than an AI chatbot on the other end that can't get basic things right.