California AB 723: Where Photo Editing Ends and Misrepresentation Begins

California AB 723, in force since 1 January 2026, requires any ad that uses a digitally altered photo of a property for sale to say so next to the image and point to the original. It covers more than AI: a replaced sky, a removed utility pole and virtual staging all count, while lighting, colour and exposure fixes don't. Samy Jeffries raised it in one of our webinars as the change every real estate media professional needs on their radar, and it answers a question the industry has long left open: where marketing a home ends and misrepresenting it begins.

What the Law Counts as Altered

The law, now section 10140.8 of California's Business and Professions Code, defines a digitally altered image as one changed with editing software or AI to add, remove or change elements in it. Its list runs from fixtures, furniture, appliances, flooring, walls and paint colour to the hardscape, the landscape, the facade and the floor plan, and on to what lies beyond the property: streetlights, utility poles, neighbouring properties and the views through its windows.

What it leaves out is just as specific: lighting, sharpening, white balance, colour correction, angle, straightening, cropping, exposure and other common adjustments that don't change how the property is represented. So bringing back a bright window or a dark corner is fine, while replacing the grey sky in that window, taking a pole off the street or furnishing an empty room is an alteration. For years the industry treated editing as makeup for a house, a grey area where most things went. The law has made that area much smaller.

The duty falls on the broker or salesperson, and on anyone acting on their behalf, which includes the photographer who makes the edit.

What Every Ad Has to Carry

An ad or other promotional material that uses an altered photo needs a statement on or next to the image saying it has been altered. The statement has to be reasonably conspicuous, and it has to point to a link, URL or QR code where the original, unaltered image can be seen and is clearly identified as the original. On a website the agent or broker controls, the unaltered versions go into the posting itself, or the same kind of link does.

That reaches everywhere a listing is advertised: flyers, social posts, the agent's own website and the MLS. In the MLS, the label and the original also have to follow that MLS's own photo rules, which differ from one MLS to the next, down to whether a watermark is allowed at all.

Where Editing Becomes Misrepresentation

The law sets the minimum. The industry's own standard is older: Article 12 of the NAR Code of Ethics requires Realtors to present a true picture in their advertising, and bars manipulating listing content in a way that produces a deceptive or misleading result. Read together, they draw the line: fixing how the camera saw the room is editing, while changing what a buyer would find there needs disclosing at best and misleads at worst.

Removing a pile of rubbish or a tenant's belongings has long been treated as cleanup, but under California's definition any removal is an alteration that needs disclosing. Removing something permanent, a utility pole or a crack in the driveway, misleads the buyer whatever the label says. Structural changes, a straightened roofline, a missing wall or new hardwood over the carpet, show a house that doesn't exist.

Photographers are the broker's first line of defence here, because the edit happens on their desk. When an agent asks to "just Photoshop out the neighbour's fence", explain what the law says about neighbouring properties and offer a disclosed version beside the original instead. Check every AI result too, since AI can change parts of a room beyond the edit you asked for. And keep every original, because each altered image now depends on one. A photographer who works this way can offer that transparency to agents as part of the service.

Keeping the Original Beside Every Edit

In Giraffe360's Content Studio, the edits that need disclosing never replace the photo they started from. AI Enhance saves each staged room, new sky or twilight version in its own AI enhanced folder and leaves the original where it was, so the pair the law asks for is already there to download. In the Still Photo Editor, object removal and the other changes can be undone with Revert to Original.

For the statement itself, the disclosure watermark puts your own wording on the photo, in the position you choose, with "Digitally Altered" as its default label. That suits flyers and social posts, where the statement has to sit on or next to the image; for an MLS that wants the label in the description instead, switch it off. And the listing's property website, with a gallery you choose photo by photo, is a public page the statement can point to for the originals.