From academia, to major accounting firms, to prestige consultancies of all types, the studies delivered on artificial intelligence (AI) are fashioned in the most sober tones possible — and yet they invariably sound like science fiction.

And when the experts address AI and institutional commercial property, the same abyss between gimlet-eyed analysis and everyday believability is encountered.

RE-generative AI: How technology can transform commercial real estate is a report from Deloitte. Its senior author, John D’Angelo, real estate solutions leader at the professional services colossus, writes: “The emergence of generative AI has shifted our thinking — with use cases demonstrating that the automation of creativity and imagination could be a reality sooner than may have been anticipated.”

The “automation of creativity and imagination”? Not so long ago, an expression such as the “automation of creativity and imagination” might have been a laughab