Home › Guides › AI property video rules in Australia
The short answer
Yes, AI-assisted property video is legal in Australia, provided it does not misrepresent the property. The law does not care how an image was made. It cares whether the finished advertisement gives a buyer a false impression. Motion applied to a real photograph is fine. Motion that invents, removes or improves what the property actually contains is not.
What actually applies
There is no Australian statute specifically about AI property video as at August 2026. Four existing regimes do the work instead, and all four turn on the same question: would the average consumer be misled?
| Regime | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Australian Consumer Law, s18 and s29 Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth) |
Prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct and false representations about goods, including property. Treasury's October 2025 review confirmed these provisions apply to AI-generated content exactly as they apply to photography. From 28 March 2026 the maximum corporate penalty is the greater of A$100 million, three times the benefit obtained, or 30% of adjusted turnover. |
| State agent advertising rules NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria, QLD OFT |
NSW Fair Trading is the most explicit. Agents must not modify photographs so that the images no longer truthfully and fairly represent the property, must not change a property's appearance by digitally removing or adding features, and must not zoom in on a photograph of a view to make that view appear closer. |
| Portal media policy realestate.com.au, Domain |
Portals set their own media terms and can remove listings. Neither REA nor Domain published an AI-specific listing-media policy that we could locate at August 2026, so treat this as unresolved and check your current agreement rather than assuming permission. |
| Overseas rules, if you syndicate | If your listing reaches US or EU audiences, more prescriptive rules apply. California requires a conspicuous disclosure plus a link or QR code to the original unaltered image for digitally altered listing images, and the EU AI Act's transparency obligations became applicable on 2 August 2026. |
Who carries the risk, you or your vendor?
In Australia, the licensed agent carries it. Consumer law and state agent rules attach to the person making the representation to the buyer, which is the agency publishing the advertisement, not the studio that produced the file. A vendor cannot take that liability off you, which is exactly why the vendor's production standard should be something you can read.
What must never be generated
This is the standard we operate to on every film. It is a contractual schedule for our clients, not marketing copy, and we refuse these requests at any price.
✓ Always fine
- Camera motion inside the photographed frame, push, pull, pan, tilt, parallax, gentle orbit
- Ambient motion in things that genuinely move: curtains at a real open window, water in an existing pool, foliage, clouds already in shot
- Global colour grade, exposure, white balance, sharpening, straightening, cropping, lens correction
- Titles, logo, music, sound effects and transitions
✕ Never, no exceptions
- Adding, removing or changing walls, floors, ceilings, doors, windows, cabinets, fireplaces, driveways, fences, decks or landscaping
- Adding or removing a pool, spa, garage, outbuilding or extension
- Changing or enhancing a view from a window or balcony, including zooming a view closer
- Removing or repairing defects: damp, cracks, peeling paint, stains, rust, mould
- Removing power lines, poles, aerials or neighbouring buildings
- Generating any room, angle or elevation that was never photographed
- Changing time of day, season or sky, including sky replacement
- Altering room proportions or lens geometry to make a space read larger
- Adding people, animals, vehicles or lifestyle elements
The one-line test
At the end of every generated clip, every object, surface, fixture, defect and view visible must also be visible or provably present in the photograph the client supplied. We add motion, light and sound. We never add property.
What about virtual staging?
Virtual staging is legal but carries more disclosure obligation, not less. Adding furniture to an empty room is squarely "adding elements", so it must be labelled as a virtual representation, delivered as a clearly separate asset, and never blended into a film that is otherwise presented as a record of the property. We deliver staging only on written instruction and always as its own labelled file.
How to disclose properly
Most disclosure fails for a technical reason rather than a legal one: captions and metadata are stripped the moment a portal syndicates a listing, or a client re-uploads the file to Instagram. Only burned-in pixels survive the journey. Every film we deliver carries three artefacts:
- A burned-in lockup from frame one reading "AI-assisted motion. Digitally enhanced.", legible at thumbnail size.
- A three-second end card stating that the film was produced from photographs using AI-assisted motion, that no features, defects, landscaping or views were added, removed or altered, and where the originals can be seen.
- A paired-originals page, an unlisted URL and printable QR code showing each original photograph beside its finished shot. This one artefact satisfies the Australian side-by-side expectation and the stricter Californian link-to-original requirement at the same time.
We also archive every supplied original unmodified, hashed and timestamped, for seven years. If a complaint ever lands, the evidence pack already exists.
Common questions
Do I have to tell buyers a film used AI?
No Australian rule as at August 2026 requires those exact words. But the underlying duty is not to mislead, and disclosure is the cheapest way to prove you were not trying to. Given portals, buyers and journalists are all now looking for undisclosed alteration, we treat visible disclosure as standard rather than optional.
Can a listing be pulled for AI-altered media?
Yes, portals set their own media terms and can remove or suspend a listing regardless of whether a law was broken. That commercial risk usually arrives long before any regulator does, and it is the more likely consequence of getting this wrong.
Does this apply to short-stay and Airbnb listings?
Yes, and Airbnb is explicit about it. Airbnb's Ground Rules state it will ask hosts to remove content where AI or other digital technology has been used to edit flaws, hide damage, add amenities that are not part of a listing, or otherwise misrepresent it. The test is misrepresentation, not method, the same standard as Australian consumer law.
We publish this standard so you can hold us to it
Every film we deliver is built to the red list above, ships with the three disclosure artefacts, and comes with your originals archived. Your first order is 25% off while the launch offer lasts.
Disclaimer. This page is general information for Australian property professionals and is not legal advice. Laws, regulator guidance and portal policies change. Confirm your obligations with a qualified Australian lawyer and with your portal agreements before publishing. Where this page describes a rule we could not confirm against a primary source, it says so.