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Do you find yourself constantly trying to elude AI chatbots? If you are looking for a home to rent, you may find it is getting a lot harder to get around them. Landlords across the country are embracing AI concierges. NPR's Stephan Bisaha reports on one renter who can only reach his landlord through a chatbot.
STEPHAN BISAHA, BYLINE: Park La Brea in Los Angeles is a big apartment complex. Like, more than 4,000 units big. And Brian Pace has lived in one of those units for about a decade.
BRIAN PACE: And actually, the cool thing is my neighbors are all cool, which is an unusual experience for me, right?
BISAHA: But it's not all California sunshine. Pace says maintenance has always been slow and understaffed. Then Pace found out about a new worker.
PACE: One day, I got a text saying, hi, I'm Liv. I'm, like, the Park La Brea AI, and I'm here to serve you. And my response was, is this a scam?
BISAHA: No scam. From then on, if Pace had a maintenance need, the AI chatbot Liv would be the first to answer. Like when water started pouring in through Pace's ceiling.
PACE: And so we're looking at it going, that's damaging the property. They're going to want to know that as quick as possible.
BISAHA: Liv said it would put in a work order for him, but Pace needed someone right away. So he switched from texting to calling, and answering on the other end of the phone was Liv the chatbot.
PACE: There's even ambient noise that sounds like she's in a call center.
BISAHA: AI human cosplaying aside, Pace asked Liv about getting the leak fixed.
PACE: It was all like, OK, I'm going to transfer you to talk directly to maintenance so that we can get somebody over, and hung up on me on the spot.
BISAHA: It was pretty clear to Pace maintenance was not coming. So he kept trying and eventually reached a human who could help. NPR was not able to get a human at Park La Brea to return our requests for comment. Still, Park La Brea is far from alone in embracing bots like Liv.
JORGE BARRO: No, no, it's a broad industry trend.
BISAHA: Jorge Barro is an economist with the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University. He's heard from large landlords experimenting with chatbots and finding them more efficient than people. They respond quicker to tenants...
BARRO: And resolve the problem faster. So that generally led to better tenant satisfaction in the cases where it worked well.
BISAHA: Yeah, cases where it worked well. Barro thinks companies will always need human workers to step in when the AI can't step up. Barro says AI can instead fill entry-level concierge jobs like what's your rent balance? Or a low-stakes maintenance request. It's less about AI replacing people.
BARRO: It's more like, we're struggling to fill positions, and maybe we don't need a human to do this anymore. Maybe we can get the machine to do it.
BISAHA: Renter Brian Pace in LA says, for routine requests, Liv has actually improved response times, like when the hallway flooded. Pace just texted Liv a pic, and an hour later, a maintenance crew was there.
PACE: So, I mean, big win.
BISAHA: But if he has a problem where he needs to talk to an actual human, he says it's only gotten worse.
PACE: Well, the issue isn't Liv. The issue is that they're not responding. I can't get ahold of them.
BISAHA: Pace said if he had to summarize his experience with Liv, it's that he's now easier to ignore. Stephan Bisaha, NPR News.
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